Be the Change! Share this using the tools below.
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tea Party. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
How the Tea Party and Occupy Movements Are the Same
Be the Change! Share this using the tools below.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
America’s Message To The Rest Of The World: You Send Us Oil And Cheap Plastic Gadgets And We’ll Send You Our Wealth And Prosperity
Have you ever seen pictures of extravagant wealth from places such as Dubai or Abu Dhabi and wondered where in the world they got all that money from? Have you ever read news stories that talk about China lending us hundreds of billions of dollars and wondered how they could possibly have so much wealth? Well, it is actually quite simple. They got much of it from us. Every month, the United States buys much more from the rest of the world then they buy from us. It is called a "trade deficit" and the United States has been running one for decades. In essence, what is happening each month is that we are transferring somewhere between 40 to 50 billion dollars of our national wealth to the rest of the globe and they are sending us oil and cheap plastic gadgets that Americans greedily consume. By the end of the year we have usually transferred somewhere around a half trillion dollars of our national wealth out of the country for good.
In order to maintain our standard of living, the U.S. government has been going to the countries we have been sending our wealth to and has been begging them to loan us massive amounts of their dollars. At this point the U.S. government literally owes trillions of dollars to the rest of the world.
Scoffers say that it is just a bunch of "paper money" that we are sending them, but the truth is that it is hundreds of billions of dollars of "paper money" that is not in the hands of average Americans. We have sent massive amounts of our wealth and prosperity overseas and it isn't coming back unless we borrow it.
Today there are dozens and dozens of U.S. cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Camden, New Jersey that are turning into post-industrial hellholes while thousands of gleaming new modern factories are going up all over China. 42.9 million Americans are now on food stamps (a 16 percent increase in just one year) while the oil sheiks of the Middle East build opulent palaces that are extravagant beyond belief.
Most Americans do not realize how serious the U.S. addiction to foreign oil really is. We are constantly being drained of our wealth by the oil powers of the Middle East.
So what are they doing with all of this money? Well, let's take a look at just a couple of examples.
Have you ever heard of the Emirates Palace? It is located in the United Arab Emirates and it cost approximately 3.8 billion dollars to build. The following is how one writer for a major UK newspaper described it after a visit....
The Emirates Palace has so many biggest and best boasts, it could have its own chapter in the Guinness Book of Records, but the atrium is the whistles and bells, the jaw-dropping big daddy of them all — 60 metres high, 42 metres wide and topped with the largest dome in the world. Staff need golf carts to negotiate their way around it. It is decorated with 13 colours of marble, ranging from sunrise yellow to sunset red (to reflect the many hues of the desert), and lots and lots and lots of gold: 6,040 square metres of gold leaf cover the largest gilded expanse ever created in one building. It’s even in the food. I ate gold leaf on my chocolate cake. Apparently, it aids digestion.
In Dubai, there is so much wealth that they pretty much build whatever they can dream up. For example, in Dubai you will find the largest "indoor ski resort" in the world. One travel site describes it this way....
When one thinks of Arabia, let alone Dubai, one likely pictures an arid desert of heat and sun. One does not think of snow skiing. Yet, that is what one can do at Ski Dubai, arguably the largest indoor ski resort in the world. The resort features 22,500 square meters of ski area. The heavily insulated building is kept at 30.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the day and 21.2 degrees Fahrenheit throughout the night, which is when the snow is generated. The resort features five ski runs and is open year round.
But it is not just the Middle East that is getting incredibly wealthy off of the United States. In a recent article entitled "China #1, United States #2? 25 Facts That Prove The Transition Is Really Happening" I detailed how China is in the process of surpassing the United States economically.
Over the past 25 years, the U.S. trade deficit with China has soared into the stratosphere. In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollarsfor the entire year. In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with China was over 28 billion dollars.
For many Americans this can be difficult to comprehend. For a moment, imagine a giant map of the world and that there is a gigantic pile of money in China and a gigantic pile of money in the United States. Then start taking 20 billion dollars from the pile of the United States and give it to China every single month.
After a while, what is going to happen?
Well, the United States is going to be a lot poorer and China is going to be a lot wealthier.
As we have become poorer, it has been harder and harder to maintain our very high standard of living.
The U.S. government has been borrowing larger and larger sums of money from the rest of the world in order to "stimulate" our economy, but in the process we are piling up horrific amounts of debt.
The national debt of the United States is now 13 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.
If we did that again over the next 30 years, we would have a national debt of approximately $170 trillion by the year 2040.
Of course that will never happen.
Why?
Buy 1 Get 2 Free at Botanic Choice Buy 1 Bottle and Get 2 FREE (select items), plus Free Shipping on $25+ Expires 12/31/2010
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods
Print this page
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
China #1, United States #2? 25 Facts That Prove The Transition Is Really Happening
 |
| The End of the American Dream |
On a recent episode of The Office, Michael Scott spent much of the show bemoaning the fact that China could soon become the number one economic superpower. Of course by the end of the episode everyone had concluded that the United States would continue to be number one indefinitely, but in the real world things are not so simple. Sadly, the cold, hard facts reveal that China is on the rise and the United States is experiencing a dramatic economic decline. The world is changing and China is projected to become the largest economy in the world at some point during the next decade. Americans have been taught from birth that "the U.S. is number one", but the transition is really happening. China is passing the United States even in quite a few high tech industries and in many areas of scientific research. The numbers that you are going to read below are absolutely staggering. It is getting really hard to deny that the Chinese are wiping the floor with us economically. In fact, they are beating us so badly that it is hard to put into words.
Of course our leaders are saying all the right things. During the State of the Union address last January, Barack Obama defiantly declared the followingto the rest of the world....
"I do not accept second place for the United States of America."
Well, Barack Obama may not be willing to "accept" it, but that doesn't mean that it is not happening. China is becoming an absolute powerhouse. Of course that would never have happened if we had not opened up trade with them.
We have essentially merged our economy with China's over the past couple of decades. Now, if you walk into just about any store and start examining the products you will notice that far more of them are made in China than are made in the United States.
But most Americans still do not take China seriously. Most Americans still view China as being vastly inferior to the United States. Most Americans do not consider China to be an economic or a military threat at all.
Unfortunately, Americans have become so dumbed-down that only about 70 percent of them can even find China on a map.
The truth is that the world is radically changing. The truth is that China has become a world class rival of the United States. The truth is that the United States had better wake up fast if it wants to stay "number one".
The following are 25 facts that prove that China is rapidly becoming the number one economic superpower on the globe....
#1 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China's share had soared to 20 percent.
#2 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but this past summer China took over the number one spot.
#3 Nobel economist Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040 if current trends continue.
#4 Between 2000 and 2009, America's trade deficit with China skyrocketed nearly 300 percent.
#5 Over the past 15 years, China has moved up from 14th place to 2nd placein the world in published scientific research articles.
#6 Apple iPhones are manufactured in China by workers making about 293 dollars a month (and that was after a big raise).
#7 In 2009, the United States ranked dead last of the 40 nations examined by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation when it came to "change" in "global innovation-based competitiveness" over the previous ten years.
#8 According to one recent study, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.
#9 Today, China controls over 90 percent of the total global supply of rare earth elements.
#10 According to a disturbing new study by the Economic Policy Institute, if the trade deficit with China continues to increase at its current rate, the U.S. economy will lose over half a million jobs this year alone.
#11 China is now the number one producer in the world of wind and solar power.
#12 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.
#13 Russia and China have announced that they have decided to quit using the U.S. dollar and instead start using their own national currencies when trading with each other.
#14 China now possesses the fastest supercomputer on the entire globe.
#15 In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold around the world. So how many of those cellphones were manufactured inside the United States? Zero.
#16 Today, the United States spends about $3.90 on Chinese goods for every $1 that China spends on goods from the United States.
#17 Now, close to half of all the graduate science students enrolled at colleges and universities in the United States are foreigners.
#18 China now has the world's fastest train and the world's biggest high-speed rail network.
#19 Manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is actually lower in 2010 than it was in 1975.
#20 China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of U.S. defense systems.
#21 Over the past several decades, China has been able to accumulateapproximately $2.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, and the U.S. government now owes them close to 900 billion dollars.
#22 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.
#23 In 1985, the U.S. trade deficit with China was 6 million dollars for the entire year. In the month of August alone, the U.S. trade deficit with Chinawas over 28 billion dollars.
#24 According to author Clyde Prestowitz, China's number one export to the U.S. is computer equipment.
#25 In 2010, the number one U.S. export to China is "scrap and trash".
Buy 1 Get 2 Free at Botanic Choice Buy 1 Bottle and Get 2 FREE (select items), plus Free Shipping on $25+ Expires 12/31/2010
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods
Print this page
Why Democrats And Republicans Are Both Wrong About The Bush Tax Cuts
 |
| The False Left/Right Paradigm |
All over the Internet, Republican pundits are declaring that extending the Bush tax cuts will save the economy and Democrat pundits are declaring that ending the Bush tax cuts will save the economy. Well, you know what? Nothing will save the U.S. economy. The U.S. government is going to continue to drown in a sea of debt no matter what happens with these tax cuts. State and local governments are also going to continue to drown in a sea of debt. Thousands of factories and millions of jobs are going to continue to be shipped overseas every single year. America is going to continue to transfer tens of billions of dollars of its national wealth to foreign nations every single month. Nothing that the Republicans and Democrats are debating right now is going to do a thing to alter the fundamental problems that the U.S. economy is facing.
Not that I personally do not like tax cuts. I would like my own personal income taxes to be cut down to zero percent please. I will take as many tax cuts as I can personally get.
And it is absolutely undeniable that the federal government is already handed way, way, way more money than it ever should need. Starving the federal monster of cash is a good thing. We need a much, much, much smaller federal government. But the odds of us ever returning to the kind of limited central government envisioned by our Founding Fathers is somewhere between slim and none and slim just left the building.
So aren't less taxes always good? Well, not necessarily. You see, the federal government is planning to spend much more money in the years ahead. When you combine significant tax cuts with huge increases in spending you get lots more debt.
Extending the Bush tax cuts (and throwing in a few extra ones) will help the U.S. economy in the short-term, but without accompanying brutal spending cuts it will make our long-term debt problems even worse.
But most of our politicians don't think about the long-term. Most of them just want the economy to turn around in the short-term so that they can get re-elected.
For example, Barack Obama is not completely stupid. He realizes that these tax cuts are probably his best shot at a short-term economic boost. If the economy starts to get back to "normal", it may be just enough to get him another term in office.
And self-preservation is what most U.S. politicians are most interested in.
Meanwhile, we are heading for a national debt nightmare that threatens to destroy our financial system and plunge us into national bankruptcy.
But if our politicians did attempt to make the brutal spending cuts that would be necessary to balance the budget, most Americans would start screaming bloody murder. The truth is that the American people have become dependent on the government and they like getting their checks, their handouts and their government contracts.
Okay, so what will this deal that Obama has made with the Republicans actually do?
Well, it will extend most of the Bush tax cuts for two years (right up through the 2012 presidential election). The following are some of the details....
*All income levels will continue to be taxed at the lower rates instituted by the original Bush tax cuts. That means that the highest rate will remain at 35 percent.
*Barack Obama claims that extending these tax cuts will save the average American family approximately $3,000 next year.
*The 15 percent rate on capital gains and dividends will be continued.
*As part of the package, Republicans have agreed to a 13 month extension of long-term unemployment benefits.
*One new tax cut included in the deal is a reduction of the Social Security payroll tax by two percentage points for one year. So for a year U.S. workers will be paying just 4.2 percent instead of 6.2 percent. Barack Obama believes that Americans will save $120 billion next year from this tax cut alone. For the average American family, it will mean that they will have approximately an extra $1000 in their wallets.
*The existing $1,000 child tax credit will be extended for the next two years.
*Another tax cut that is new would allow U.S. businesses to immediately expense all business investments in 2011. The Obama administration is claiming that this tax cut would be the biggest "temporary investment incentive" in American history.
*A compromise was reached on the estate tax. There will be an estate tax exemption of 5 million dollars per person and the maximum rate will be 35 percent.
So how much will all of this cost?
Well, all over the Internet the Democrats and the Republicans are arguing over figures.
One figure that is being thrown around quite a bit is $900 billion over two years.
But what is another $900 billion when we are already caught in a death spiral of government debt?
The IMF was already projecting that federal government debt was going to exceed 100 percent of GDP by 2015.
So how soon will we get there now?
Today, our national debt is more than 13 times larger than it was just 30 years ago....
So can't we just "grow" our way out of this debt?
Buy 1 Get 2 Free at Botanic Choice Buy 1 Bottle and Get 2 FREE (select items), plus Free Shipping on $25+ Expires 12/31/2010
Fresh food that lasts from eFoods Direct (Ad)
Live Superfoods
Print this page
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)