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On January 05 2013 20:42 JustPassingBy wrote:
Anyways, the fierce struggles in the upper levels of the politics in the u.s.a. are only natural as they reflect large gaps running through the different political opinions in the population. I myself am very interested to see how things will flatten out in the end.
not an attack on you, but really the entire difference of political opinion in the United States can be summed up in only two viewpoints? i call BS. America really needs to move away from its two party state because while china only has an appearance of democracy they don't tend to spend an entire presidential term bickering over policy
also i feel like a lot of the people posting in this thread need to stop disregarding criticism just because its from china because right now the US is acting childish by refusing to admit it is in a pretty bad state.
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On January 05 2013 21:31 GnarlyArbitrage wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 05 2013 20:23 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2013 10:08 RinconH wrote:
lol why wouldn't the U.S. print money?
They have the license to print gold.
U.S. currency is Gold. The entire world depends on it and that's not going to change any time soon.
China can keep complaining... and keep buying billions of treasuries. Currency collapses do not happen overnight but we are seeing a steady diminishing of the USD purchasing power.Gold was USD$300 back in 2000 and now it is around USD$1700.Back in the early 1970s when the dollar was backed by gold the price of gold was USD$35.Just because something is true today does not mean it will be true in one, five or ten years time. Also the top holder of US treasuries is now the US Federal Reserve and not China.Basically the FED is printing money and using it to buy US treasuries and bonds.How can you claim that is sustainable? The situation is getting worse not better. You sure our purchasing power has been going down steadily? When I take $2,000 from 1970 and apply it to 2012, well, I've got more money! (Even from 2000 to 2012, it grew!) Why would the government do something that is unsustainable? Do they not know what they are doing? (How did they get into a position if they didn't know what they were doing?) Do they hate America? Do they just not care? Why wouldn't the government take the steps necessary to ensure the survival of this nation? The rounds of quantitative easing have been to combat hyper-deflation. Some people will literally start yelling at you in the face in the real world if you present them with this. (If this happens, don't present the facts, because you may be strangled beyond death.) November's rate was 1.8, with our target being either 2 or 2.2%
Just because you have it doesn't mean it is good on you.
Proof that gold was growing in terms of price per ounce or whatever does not mean your purchasing power is growing steadily. It actually might mean the opposite in certain respects. If you could theoretically have bought a gold ounce for 35 usd 30 years ago, but now it would need around 1500 usd just to pay for the same gold ounce, then you could actually say the usd doesn't have the same value as in the past to purchase the same product.
Granted, there is inflation and demand that drives up the price so we can take that example into mortgaged back housing.
A house you purchased at year A is worth 40k (initially). After say a 5 or 10 year period since demand was higher for your area, lets say it is now 100k (speculative projection). Now you could look at that and say, I've made 60k. Well, that 60k only applies, if you've already paid for the house and no other loans are stuck on to your house, right?
So aren't treasury bonds working in the same way wherein they are "technically" selling a portion of the worth of the gold they have in paper as a commitment to back their loans? So you could say a 1500 usd per gold ounce has already been loaned out for say 1200 usd per ounce. Then that would mean you only really have 300 usd per ounce left to use or claim as "your own".
I know this is too simplistic but it should give you an idea on how spending just because you believe you have said amount at X year is not right. you have to take into account was is actually left for you to spend.
And to say that government knows what they are doing is not necessarily true. Every action logically has a reaction to be expected. So pushing the problem onto the next generation would be what is being viewed as the "reaction" of this action by the US. So you may not be the one to suffer, but the next generation would be the ones to suffer as they have no way to play around with number like the current generation has done.
That's my two cents
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On January 06 2013 09:22 RavenLoud wrote:Show nested quote +On January 06 2013 08:35 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 07:01 nolook wrote:On January 05 2013 06:51 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 06:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2013 04:45 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:On January 05 2013 03:06 Velr wrote:
What i find fun when looking at the "high taxes BAAD" people is that facts seem to just plain disagree with you?
Sweden went well thru the whole crisis.
Denmark too.
Is there any 1st World "socialist" country, in which the people actually pay their taxes, that struggles badly?
.
Most first World countries with high taxes and expensive/strong social services went thru this whole crisis whiteout big problems... Yet you demonize socialism high tax/high social services (which you call entitlements, wtf?) just because... I have no Idea.. Pure unfounded ideology? Yeah. Even the US itself used to have much higher tax rates, up to 94% in 1944, for the biggest part of the last century until the 80s. Despite financing two world wars, being in dept with 120% of GDP after WW2, helping to rebuild Germany and Europe after the 2nd world war and burning a lot of money during the arms race with Russia and cold war they still experienced something like a golden age during that time. I must admit I don't know a lot about the US economic history and surely there are other factors, but can this be pure coincidence? Very few were affected by those high rates and rebuilding Europe helped the economy - lots for our factories to do and no competitors. There were also demographics at play. The working age population was booming whereas now the retired population is booming. The main causes of our current deficit can be traced back to the policies of 2 presidents, LBJ and Reagan. LBJ's Great Society created a literal shit ton of government agencies designed to protect the poor and needy, such as Medicare(and later Medicaid) along with a broad spectrum of educational and social initiatives designed to improve social mobility. Back then, because of the massive scope of these programs, they were often poorly implemented and barely fit with in the government budget. Flash forward to Reagan, in an effort to kill the cold war, Reagan followed the policy of deficit spending by upping the spending on Military, while diminishing taxes on the wealthiest Americans(which in practice is basically just corporations). This massive influx of capital into both government military research and private enterprise is what ultimately killed the Soviet Union, because they(under the rules of a balanced budget) did not have the resources to support both a military arms race and maintain a first world standard of living, while fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. If Khrushchev had a similar idea when the US was sinking resources into Vietnam, I'm sure we'd all be singing praises to the Soviet Union today. By reducing revenue while upping spending to kill the Soviets, Reagan put the deficit in a downward spiral that has grown into the fiscal cliff we know today. Anyway, flash forward to today, and we see the modern iterations of both parties fighting to the death over the policies of LBJ and Reagan. The democrats want their social programs like it was still 1960 and Republicans want their tax breaks like it was still 1980, and in the crossfire lies the american people and the global financial system. This has to be the craziest interpretation of USSR collapse I've ever heard. Do you actually believe in this? lol! So, pray tell. What DID cause the collapse of the Soviet Union, if not economic and military pressure exerted from US policy? The collapse of the USSR is primarily political, although economics do play a role, it is secondary to the well intentioned but badly executed reforms attempted by Gorbachev, and karma, imo.
Or we could face up to the fact that Reagan drained the USSR economically and politically by getting the Saudis to flood the world market with cheap oil (destroying the main revenue source of the USSR economy, oil sales), by partnering with the Pope to embezzle funds into Poland for Solidarity (without which Solidarity would have collapsed), by smuggling arms and money to the muhajideen and other anti-Communists (further draining the USSR treasury), by attacking the USSR directly on moral grounds (giving comfort and hope to the people who tossed off the satellite state governments), and by starting a naval build-up that the USSR spent billions futilely trying to match (again, draining the USSR treasury).
I understand that you can't give credit to the US because you are a person who would avoid doing that at all costs, but facts are facts. Ask Lech Walesa who brought down the Iron Curtain. Ask anyone else who was actually living behind the Iron Curtain not named Gorbachev, who has gotten the biggest case of sour grapes ever in the last 20 years. Why do you think he started those reforms? The USSR was falling behind the US. He was trying to save the system and preserve a gentler, milder Communism that could catch back up economically and technologically to the West. It wasn't enough. The system was too decayed already and pressured from the outside to maintain itself.
The whole rotten edifice just needed a few kicks to come crashing down, and the US either delivered them or helped others to.
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On January 04 2013 09:04 Atrbyg wrote:Agreed. The US gov needs to get its act together.
it's not the US gov that needs to get it's act together. it's the people that have completely lost touch with how their political system works and how to use it.
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On January 07 2013 08:10 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +On January 06 2013 09:22 RavenLoud wrote:On January 06 2013 08:35 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 07:01 nolook wrote:On January 05 2013 06:51 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 06:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2013 04:45 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:On January 05 2013 03:06 Velr wrote:
What i find fun when looking at the "high taxes BAAD" people is that facts seem to just plain disagree with you?
Sweden went well thru the whole crisis.
Denmark too.
Is there any 1st World "socialist" country, in which the people actually pay their taxes, that struggles badly?
.
Most first World countries with high taxes and expensive/strong social services went thru this whole crisis whiteout big problems... Yet you demonize socialism high tax/high social services (which you call entitlements, wtf?) just because... I have no Idea.. Pure unfounded ideology? Yeah. Even the US itself used to have much higher tax rates, up to 94% in 1944, for the biggest part of the last century until the 80s. Despite financing two world wars, being in dept with 120% of GDP after WW2, helping to rebuild Germany and Europe after the 2nd world war and burning a lot of money during the arms race with Russia and cold war they still experienced something like a golden age during that time. I must admit I don't know a lot about the US economic history and surely there are other factors, but can this be pure coincidence? Very few were affected by those high rates and rebuilding Europe helped the economy - lots for our factories to do and no competitors. There were also demographics at play. The working age population was booming whereas now the retired population is booming. The main causes of our current deficit can be traced back to the policies of 2 presidents, LBJ and Reagan. LBJ's Great Society created a literal shit ton of government agencies designed to protect the poor and needy, such as Medicare(and later Medicaid) along with a broad spectrum of educational and social initiatives designed to improve social mobility. Back then, because of the massive scope of these programs, they were often poorly implemented and barely fit with in the government budget. Flash forward to Reagan, in an effort to kill the cold war, Reagan followed the policy of deficit spending by upping the spending on Military, while diminishing taxes on the wealthiest Americans(which in practice is basically just corporations). This massive influx of capital into both government military research and private enterprise is what ultimately killed the Soviet Union, because they(under the rules of a balanced budget) did not have the resources to support both a military arms race and maintain a first world standard of living, while fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. If Khrushchev had a similar idea when the US was sinking resources into Vietnam, I'm sure we'd all be singing praises to the Soviet Union today. By reducing revenue while upping spending to kill the Soviets, Reagan put the deficit in a downward spiral that has grown into the fiscal cliff we know today. Anyway, flash forward to today, and we see the modern iterations of both parties fighting to the death over the policies of LBJ and Reagan. The democrats want their social programs like it was still 1960 and Republicans want their tax breaks like it was still 1980, and in the crossfire lies the american people and the global financial system. This has to be the craziest interpretation of USSR collapse I've ever heard. Do you actually believe in this? lol! So, pray tell. What DID cause the collapse of the Soviet Union, if not economic and military pressure exerted from US policy? The collapse of the USSR is primarily political, although economics do play a role, it is secondary to the well intentioned but badly executed reforms attempted by Gorbachev, and karma, imo. Or we could face up to the fact that Reagan drained the USSR economically and politically by getting the Saudis to flood the world market with cheap oil (destroying the main revenue source of the USSR economy, oil sales), by partnering with the Pope to embezzle funds into Poland for Solidarity (without which Solidarity would have collapsed), by smuggling arms and money to the muhajideen and other anti-Communists (further draining the USSR treasury), by attacking the USSR directly on moral grounds (giving comfort and hope to the people who tossed off the satellite state governments), and by starting a naval build-up that the USSR spent billions futilely trying to match (again, draining the USSR treasury). I understand that you can't give credit to the US because you are a person who would avoid doing that at all costs, but facts are facts. Ask Lech Walesa who brought down the Iron Curtain. Ask anyone else who was actually living behind the Iron Curtain not named Gorbachev, who has gotten the biggest case of sour grapes ever in the last 20 years. Why do you think he started those reforms? The USSR was falling behind the US. He was trying to save the system and preserve a gentler, milder Communism that could catch back up economically and technologically to the West. It wasn't enough. The system was too decayed already and pressured from the outside to maintain itself. The whole rotten edifice just needed a few kicks to come crashing down, and the US either delivered them or helped others to.
The funny thing is, now it is the US that has entered the "Brezhnev Stagnation", with a silent rot slowly killing all that has made America great.
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On January 06 2013 09:50 SCkad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2013 20:42 JustPassingBy wrote:
Anyways, the fierce struggles in the upper levels of the politics in the u.s.a. are only natural as they reflect large gaps running through the different political opinions in the population. I myself am very interested to see how things will flatten out in the end. not an attack on you, but really the entire difference of political opinion in the United States can be summed up in only two viewpoints? i call BS. America really needs to move away from its two party state because while china only has an appearance of democracy they don't tend to spend an entire presidential term bickering over policy also i feel like a lot of the people posting in this thread need to stop disregarding criticism just because its from china because right now the US is acting childish by refusing to admit it is in a pretty bad state.
Well, among US people there is almost no divergence of opinions on this topic. If you look at statistics, almost all Americans, regardless of whether they are republicans, democrats or independents, at least in some cases agree almost exactly on what should be done. When asked particular detailed down-to-numbers questions on how to reduce the debt, republican and democrat people (not politicians) often have nearly the same opinions: http://www.ted.com/talks/adam_davidson_what_we_learned_from_teetering_on_the_fiscal_cliff.html
Polititians and media are just wreaking chaos, while common people actually agree on many points in this debate.
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On January 07 2013 08:10 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +On January 06 2013 09:22 RavenLoud wrote:On January 06 2013 08:35 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 07:01 nolook wrote:On January 05 2013 06:51 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 06:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2013 04:45 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:On January 05 2013 03:06 Velr wrote:
What i find fun when looking at the "high taxes BAAD" people is that facts seem to just plain disagree with you?
Sweden went well thru the whole crisis.
Denmark too.
Is there any 1st World "socialist" country, in which the people actually pay their taxes, that struggles badly?
.
Most first World countries with high taxes and expensive/strong social services went thru this whole crisis whiteout big problems... Yet you demonize socialism high tax/high social services (which you call entitlements, wtf?) just because... I have no Idea.. Pure unfounded ideology? Yeah. Even the US itself used to have much higher tax rates, up to 94% in 1944, for the biggest part of the last century until the 80s. Despite financing two world wars, being in dept with 120% of GDP after WW2, helping to rebuild Germany and Europe after the 2nd world war and burning a lot of money during the arms race with Russia and cold war they still experienced something like a golden age during that time. I must admit I don't know a lot about the US economic history and surely there are other factors, but can this be pure coincidence? Very few were affected by those high rates and rebuilding Europe helped the economy - lots for our factories to do and no competitors. There were also demographics at play. The working age population was booming whereas now the retired population is booming. The main causes of our current deficit can be traced back to the policies of 2 presidents, LBJ and Reagan. LBJ's Great Society created a literal shit ton of government agencies designed to protect the poor and needy, such as Medicare(and later Medicaid) along with a broad spectrum of educational and social initiatives designed to improve social mobility. Back then, because of the massive scope of these programs, they were often poorly implemented and barely fit with in the government budget. Flash forward to Reagan, in an effort to kill the cold war, Reagan followed the policy of deficit spending by upping the spending on Military, while diminishing taxes on the wealthiest Americans(which in practice is basically just corporations). This massive influx of capital into both government military research and private enterprise is what ultimately killed the Soviet Union, because they(under the rules of a balanced budget) did not have the resources to support both a military arms race and maintain a first world standard of living, while fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. If Khrushchev had a similar idea when the US was sinking resources into Vietnam, I'm sure we'd all be singing praises to the Soviet Union today. By reducing revenue while upping spending to kill the Soviets, Reagan put the deficit in a downward spiral that has grown into the fiscal cliff we know today. Anyway, flash forward to today, and we see the modern iterations of both parties fighting to the death over the policies of LBJ and Reagan. The democrats want their social programs like it was still 1960 and Republicans want their tax breaks like it was still 1980, and in the crossfire lies the american people and the global financial system. This has to be the craziest interpretation of USSR collapse I've ever heard. Do you actually believe in this? lol! So, pray tell. What DID cause the collapse of the Soviet Union, if not economic and military pressure exerted from US policy? The collapse of the USSR is primarily political, although economics do play a role, it is secondary to the well intentioned but badly executed reforms attempted by Gorbachev, and karma, imo. Or we could face up to the fact that Reagan drained the USSR economically and politically by getting the Saudis to flood the world market with cheap oil (destroying the main revenue source of the USSR economy, oil sales), by partnering with the Pope to embezzle funds into Poland for Solidarity (without which Solidarity would have collapsed), by smuggling arms and money to the muhajideen and other anti-Communists (further draining the USSR treasury), by attacking the USSR directly on moral grounds (giving comfort and hope to the people who tossed off the satellite state governments), and by starting a naval build-up that the USSR spent billions futilely trying to match (again, draining the USSR treasury). I understand that you can't give credit to the US because you are a person who would avoid doing that at all costs, but facts are facts. Ask Lech Walesa who brought down the Iron Curtain. Ask anyone else who was actually living behind the Iron Curtain not named Gorbachev, who has gotten the biggest case of sour grapes ever in the last 20 years. Why do you think he started those reforms? The USSR was falling behind the US. He was trying to save the system and preserve a gentler, milder Communism that could catch back up economically and technologically to the West. It wasn't enough. The system was too decayed already and pressured from the outside to maintain itself. The whole rotten edifice just needed a few kicks to come crashing down, and the US either delivered them or helped others to.
No, you don't understand me at all and I think this post would be much better without that attitude or the strawmanning assumptions.
At the end of the day, both economical and political causes are valid and intertwined, we're just arguing from different sides of the same coin.
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On January 06 2013 14:07 17Sphynx17 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2013 21:31 GnarlyArbitrage wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 05 2013 20:23 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2013 10:08 RinconH wrote:
lol why wouldn't the U.S. print money?
They have the license to print gold.
U.S. currency is Gold. The entire world depends on it and that's not going to change any time soon.
China can keep complaining... and keep buying billions of treasuries. Currency collapses do not happen overnight but we are seeing a steady diminishing of the USD purchasing power.Gold was USD$300 back in 2000 and now it is around USD$1700.Back in the early 1970s when the dollar was backed by gold the price of gold was USD$35.Just because something is true today does not mean it will be true in one, five or ten years time. Also the top holder of US treasuries is now the US Federal Reserve and not China.Basically the FED is printing money and using it to buy US treasuries and bonds.How can you claim that is sustainable? The situation is getting worse not better. You sure our purchasing power has been going down steadily? When I take $2,000 from 1970 and apply it to 2012, well, I've got more money! (Even from 2000 to 2012, it grew!) Why would the government do something that is unsustainable? Do they not know what they are doing? (How did they get into a position if they didn't know what they were doing?) Do they hate America? Do they just not care? Why wouldn't the government take the steps necessary to ensure the survival of this nation? The rounds of quantitative easing have been to combat hyper-deflation. Some people will literally start yelling at you in the face in the real world if you present them with this. (If this happens, don't present the facts, because you may be strangled beyond death.) November's rate was 1.8, with our target being either 2 or 2.2% Just because you have it doesn't mean it is good on you. Proof that gold was growing in terms of price per ounce or whatever does not mean your purchasing power is growing steadily. It actually might mean the opposite in certain respects. If you could theoretically have bought a gold ounce for 35 usd 30 years ago, but now it would need around 1500 usd just to pay for the same gold ounce, then you could actually say the usd doesn't have the same value as in the past to purchase the same product. Granted, there is inflation and demand that drives up the price so we can take that example into mortgaged back housing. A house you purchased at year A is worth 40k (initially). After say a 5 or 10 year period since demand was higher for your area, lets say it is now 100k (speculative projection). Now you could look at that and say, I've made 60k. Well, that 60k only applies, if you've already paid for the house and no other loans are stuck on to your house, right? So aren't treasury bonds working in the same way wherein they are "technically" selling a portion of the worth of the gold they have in paper as a commitment to back their loans? So you could say a 1500 usd per gold ounce has already been loaned out for say 1200 usd per ounce. Then that would mean you only really have 300 usd per ounce left to use or claim as "your own". I know this is too simplistic but it should give you an idea on how spending just because you believe you have said amount at X year is not right. you have to take into account was is actually left for you to spend. And to say that government knows what they are doing is not necessarily true. Every action logically has a reaction to be expected. So pushing the problem onto the next generation would be what is being viewed as the "reaction" of this action by the US. So you may not be the one to suffer, but the next generation would be the ones to suffer as they have no way to play around with number like the current generation has done. That's my two cents
I'm a bit lost. First, what is it that I have that's not good for me?
Secondly, are you making the value of the dollar be directly related to gold? I'm not saying that.
Are you saying that T-Bills are gold or something? Man, I haven't been this confused in the longest time.
I was saying that if I have $1,000 USD, just straight up ten 100 dollar bills, it would be over $10,000 today from the 1970s. I didn't buy the dollars with euros or yen. I worked for it and kept it. I'm not saying I'm holding gold over that time. Not at all.
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On January 07 2013 09:14 GnarlyArbitrage wrote:Show nested quote +On January 06 2013 14:07 17Sphynx17 wrote:On January 05 2013 21:31 GnarlyArbitrage wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 05 2013 20:23 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2013 10:08 RinconH wrote:
lol why wouldn't the U.S. print money?
They have the license to print gold.
U.S. currency is Gold. The entire world depends on it and that's not going to change any time soon.
China can keep complaining... and keep buying billions of treasuries. Currency collapses do not happen overnight but we are seeing a steady diminishing of the USD purchasing power.Gold was USD$300 back in 2000 and now it is around USD$1700.Back in the early 1970s when the dollar was backed by gold the price of gold was USD$35.Just because something is true today does not mean it will be true in one, five or ten years time. Also the top holder of US treasuries is now the US Federal Reserve and not China.Basically the FED is printing money and using it to buy US treasuries and bonds.How can you claim that is sustainable? The situation is getting worse not better. You sure our purchasing power has been going down steadily? When I take $2,000 from 1970 and apply it to 2012, well, I've got more money! (Even from 2000 to 2012, it grew!) Why would the government do something that is unsustainable? Do they not know what they are doing? (How did they get into a position if they didn't know what they were doing?) Do they hate America? Do they just not care? Why wouldn't the government take the steps necessary to ensure the survival of this nation? The rounds of quantitative easing have been to combat hyper-deflation. Some people will literally start yelling at you in the face in the real world if you present them with this. (If this happens, don't present the facts, because you may be strangled beyond death.) November's rate was 1.8, with our target being either 2 or 2.2% Just because you have it doesn't mean it is good on you. Proof that gold was growing in terms of price per ounce or whatever does not mean your purchasing power is growing steadily. It actually might mean the opposite in certain respects. If you could theoretically have bought a gold ounce for 35 usd 30 years ago, but now it would need around 1500 usd just to pay for the same gold ounce, then you could actually say the usd doesn't have the same value as in the past to purchase the same product. Granted, there is inflation and demand that drives up the price so we can take that example into mortgaged back housing. A house you purchased at year A is worth 40k (initially). After say a 5 or 10 year period since demand was higher for your area, lets say it is now 100k (speculative projection). Now you could look at that and say, I've made 60k. Well, that 60k only applies, if you've already paid for the house and no other loans are stuck on to your house, right? So aren't treasury bonds working in the same way wherein they are "technically" selling a portion of the worth of the gold they have in paper as a commitment to back their loans? So you could say a 1500 usd per gold ounce has already been loaned out for say 1200 usd per ounce. Then that would mean you only really have 300 usd per ounce left to use or claim as "your own". I know this is too simplistic but it should give you an idea on how spending just because you believe you have said amount at X year is not right. you have to take into account was is actually left for you to spend. And to say that government knows what they are doing is not necessarily true. Every action logically has a reaction to be expected. So pushing the problem onto the next generation would be what is being viewed as the "reaction" of this action by the US. So you may not be the one to suffer, but the next generation would be the ones to suffer as they have no way to play around with number like the current generation has done. That's my two cents I'm a bit lost. First, what is it that I have that's not good for me? Secondly, are you making the value of the dollar be directly related to gold? I'm not saying that. Are you saying that T-Bills are gold or something? Man, I haven't been this confused in the longest time. I was saying that if I have $1,000 USD, just straight up ten 100 dollar bills, it would be over $10,000 today from the 1970s. I didn't buy the dollars with euros or yen. I worked for it and kept it. I'm not saying I'm holding gold over that time. Not at all.
I think that's his point, though. The value of money is defined by what you can do with it; that's purchasing power. You can be buying gold or other stuff, it doesn't really matter. The dollar's value is directly related to what it can get you.
If you had worked for $1000 cash in the 70s and kept it under your mattress since then, you don't have more money at the end. You actually just have the $1000 you started with, because it's been sitting under your bed, untouched. Moreover, in the 70s, you might have been able to use that money to buy a car; now it might get you a TV. Far from growing, its value has plummeted.
Simply put, $1000 in the 70s being worth $10,000 today does not mean the dollar is stronger. It actually means the dollar is "weaker", because you need more money to buy the same thing.
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On January 07 2013 09:04 RavenLoud wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2013 08:10 DeepElemBlues wrote:On January 06 2013 09:22 RavenLoud wrote:On January 06 2013 08:35 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 07:01 nolook wrote:On January 05 2013 06:51 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 06:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2013 04:45 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:On January 05 2013 03:06 Velr wrote:
What i find fun when looking at the "high taxes BAAD" people is that facts seem to just plain disagree with you?
Sweden went well thru the whole crisis.
Denmark too.
Is there any 1st World "socialist" country, in which the people actually pay their taxes, that struggles badly?
.
Most first World countries with high taxes and expensive/strong social services went thru this whole crisis whiteout big problems... Yet you demonize socialism high tax/high social services (which you call entitlements, wtf?) just because... I have no Idea.. Pure unfounded ideology? Yeah. Even the US itself used to have much higher tax rates, up to 94% in 1944, for the biggest part of the last century until the 80s. Despite financing two world wars, being in dept with 120% of GDP after WW2, helping to rebuild Germany and Europe after the 2nd world war and burning a lot of money during the arms race with Russia and cold war they still experienced something like a golden age during that time. I must admit I don't know a lot about the US economic history and surely there are other factors, but can this be pure coincidence? Very few were affected by those high rates and rebuilding Europe helped the economy - lots for our factories to do and no competitors. There were also demographics at play. The working age population was booming whereas now the retired population is booming. The main causes of our current deficit can be traced back to the policies of 2 presidents, LBJ and Reagan. LBJ's Great Society created a literal shit ton of government agencies designed to protect the poor and needy, such as Medicare(and later Medicaid) along with a broad spectrum of educational and social initiatives designed to improve social mobility. Back then, because of the massive scope of these programs, they were often poorly implemented and barely fit with in the government budget. Flash forward to Reagan, in an effort to kill the cold war, Reagan followed the policy of deficit spending by upping the spending on Military, while diminishing taxes on the wealthiest Americans(which in practice is basically just corporations). This massive influx of capital into both government military research and private enterprise is what ultimately killed the Soviet Union, because they(under the rules of a balanced budget) did not have the resources to support both a military arms race and maintain a first world standard of living, while fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. If Khrushchev had a similar idea when the US was sinking resources into Vietnam, I'm sure we'd all be singing praises to the Soviet Union today. By reducing revenue while upping spending to kill the Soviets, Reagan put the deficit in a downward spiral that has grown into the fiscal cliff we know today. Anyway, flash forward to today, and we see the modern iterations of both parties fighting to the death over the policies of LBJ and Reagan. The democrats want their social programs like it was still 1960 and Republicans want their tax breaks like it was still 1980, and in the crossfire lies the american people and the global financial system. This has to be the craziest interpretation of USSR collapse I've ever heard. Do you actually believe in this? lol! So, pray tell. What DID cause the collapse of the Soviet Union, if not economic and military pressure exerted from US policy? The collapse of the USSR is primarily political, although economics do play a role, it is secondary to the well intentioned but badly executed reforms attempted by Gorbachev, and karma, imo. Or we could face up to the fact that Reagan drained the USSR economically and politically by getting the Saudis to flood the world market with cheap oil (destroying the main revenue source of the USSR economy, oil sales), by partnering with the Pope to embezzle funds into Poland for Solidarity (without which Solidarity would have collapsed), by smuggling arms and money to the muhajideen and other anti-Communists (further draining the USSR treasury), by attacking the USSR directly on moral grounds (giving comfort and hope to the people who tossed off the satellite state governments), and by starting a naval build-up that the USSR spent billions futilely trying to match (again, draining the USSR treasury). I understand that you can't give credit to the US because you are a person who would avoid doing that at all costs, but facts are facts. Ask Lech Walesa who brought down the Iron Curtain. Ask anyone else who was actually living behind the Iron Curtain not named Gorbachev, who has gotten the biggest case of sour grapes ever in the last 20 years. Why do you think he started those reforms? The USSR was falling behind the US. He was trying to save the system and preserve a gentler, milder Communism that could catch back up economically and technologically to the West. It wasn't enough. The system was too decayed already and pressured from the outside to maintain itself. The whole rotten edifice just needed a few kicks to come crashing down, and the US either delivered them or helped others to. No, you don't understand me at all and I think this post would be much better without that attitude or the strawmanning assumptions. At the end of the day, both economical and political causes are valid and intertwined, we're just arguing from different sides of the same coin.
Gorbachev's "failed" political reforms were a response to increasing pressure from Washington's expanding military budget and economic pressures exerted by Washington via the Saudi's(who dumped cheap oil to weaken Russian oil at the request of the US) and the Afghanistan war(which the rebels were funded secretly by the CIA). Maybe you need to look up the details Reykjavik Summits, which is the origin of where Gorbachev first came up with those ideas. All of Gorbachev's political reforms were implemented to appease Reagan, to try and make him stop the Star Wars(SDI) military research program. While Star Wars was a buncha made-up bullshit, if a system like that were to ever materialize, the Soviet's would be completely defenseless to an American invasion. The USSR did not have the fiscal capability to both match Reagan's fictional and ludicrous military program AND deal w/ the economic pressures exerted by America. In essence, the cold war ended on reagan's bluff.
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On January 07 2013 11:02 czylu wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2013 09:04 RavenLoud wrote:On January 07 2013 08:10 DeepElemBlues wrote:On January 06 2013 09:22 RavenLoud wrote:On January 06 2013 08:35 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 07:01 nolook wrote:On January 05 2013 06:51 czylu wrote:On January 05 2013 06:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On January 05 2013 04:45 REDBLUEGREEN wrote:On January 05 2013 03:06 Velr wrote:
What i find fun when looking at the "high taxes BAAD" people is that facts seem to just plain disagree with you?
Sweden went well thru the whole crisis.
Denmark too.
Is there any 1st World "socialist" country, in which the people actually pay their taxes, that struggles badly?
.
Most first World countries with high taxes and expensive/strong social services went thru this whole crisis whiteout big problems... Yet you demonize socialism high tax/high social services (which you call entitlements, wtf?) just because... I have no Idea.. Pure unfounded ideology? Yeah. Even the US itself used to have much higher tax rates, up to 94% in 1944, for the biggest part of the last century until the 80s. Despite financing two world wars, being in dept with 120% of GDP after WW2, helping to rebuild Germany and Europe after the 2nd world war and burning a lot of money during the arms race with Russia and cold war they still experienced something like a golden age during that time. I must admit I don't know a lot about the US economic history and surely there are other factors, but can this be pure coincidence? Very few were affected by those high rates and rebuilding Europe helped the economy - lots for our factories to do and no competitors. There were also demographics at play. The working age population was booming whereas now the retired population is booming. The main causes of our current deficit can be traced back to the policies of 2 presidents, LBJ and Reagan. LBJ's Great Society created a literal shit ton of government agencies designed to protect the poor and needy, such as Medicare(and later Medicaid) along with a broad spectrum of educational and social initiatives designed to improve social mobility. Back then, because of the massive scope of these programs, they were often poorly implemented and barely fit with in the government budget. Flash forward to Reagan, in an effort to kill the cold war, Reagan followed the policy of deficit spending by upping the spending on Military, while diminishing taxes on the wealthiest Americans(which in practice is basically just corporations). This massive influx of capital into both government military research and private enterprise is what ultimately killed the Soviet Union, because they(under the rules of a balanced budget) did not have the resources to support both a military arms race and maintain a first world standard of living, while fighting a losing war in Afghanistan. If Khrushchev had a similar idea when the US was sinking resources into Vietnam, I'm sure we'd all be singing praises to the Soviet Union today. By reducing revenue while upping spending to kill the Soviets, Reagan put the deficit in a downward spiral that has grown into the fiscal cliff we know today. Anyway, flash forward to today, and we see the modern iterations of both parties fighting to the death over the policies of LBJ and Reagan. The democrats want their social programs like it was still 1960 and Republicans want their tax breaks like it was still 1980, and in the crossfire lies the american people and the global financial system. This has to be the craziest interpretation of USSR collapse I've ever heard. Do you actually believe in this? lol! So, pray tell. What DID cause the collapse of the Soviet Union, if not economic and military pressure exerted from US policy? The collapse of the USSR is primarily political, although economics do play a role, it is secondary to the well intentioned but badly executed reforms attempted by Gorbachev, and karma, imo. Or we could face up to the fact that Reagan drained the USSR economically and politically by getting the Saudis to flood the world market with cheap oil (destroying the main revenue source of the USSR economy, oil sales), by partnering with the Pope to embezzle funds into Poland for Solidarity (without which Solidarity would have collapsed), by smuggling arms and money to the muhajideen and other anti-Communists (further draining the USSR treasury), by attacking the USSR directly on moral grounds (giving comfort and hope to the people who tossed off the satellite state governments), and by starting a naval build-up that the USSR spent billions futilely trying to match (again, draining the USSR treasury). I understand that you can't give credit to the US because you are a person who would avoid doing that at all costs, but facts are facts. Ask Lech Walesa who brought down the Iron Curtain. Ask anyone else who was actually living behind the Iron Curtain not named Gorbachev, who has gotten the biggest case of sour grapes ever in the last 20 years. Why do you think he started those reforms? The USSR was falling behind the US. He was trying to save the system and preserve a gentler, milder Communism that could catch back up economically and technologically to the West. It wasn't enough. The system was too decayed already and pressured from the outside to maintain itself. The whole rotten edifice just needed a few kicks to come crashing down, and the US either delivered them or helped others to. No, you don't understand me at all and I think this post would be much better without that attitude or the strawmanning assumptions. At the end of the day, both economical and political causes are valid and intertwined, we're just arguing from different sides of the same coin. Gorbachev's "failed" political reforms were a response to increasing pressure from Washington's expanding military budget and economic pressures exerted by Washington via the Saudi's(who dumped cheap oil to weaken Russian oil at the request of the US) and the Afghanistan war(which the rebels were funded secretly by the CIA). Maybe you need to look up the details Reykjavik Summits, which is the origin of where Gorbachev first came up with those ideas. All of Gorbachev's political reforms were implemented to appease Reagan, to try and make him stop the Star Wars(SDI) military research program. While Star Wars was a buncha made-up bullshit, if a system like that were to ever materialize, the Soviet's would be completely defenseless to an American invasion. The USSR did not have the fiscal capability to both match Reagan's fictional and ludicrous military program AND deal w/ the economic pressures exerted by America. In essence, the cold war ended on reagan's bluff.
Yes, however, the USSR would still not have collapsed so suddenly if the political house was in order, nor would they stagnate so much to begin with. It might be gradually weakened and surpassed by the US, but not roll over and die the instant someone tries to install western reforms without some major fail in politics.
I'm not sure if we disagree on anything in particular tbh. Reality is pretty complex and must be approached in a systematic way rather than a linear and black and white "this causes that end of story".
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On January 07 2013 10:49 Belisarius wrote:Show nested quote +On January 07 2013 09:14 GnarlyArbitrage wrote:On January 06 2013 14:07 17Sphynx17 wrote:On January 05 2013 21:31 GnarlyArbitrage wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 05 2013 20:23 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 05 2013 10:08 RinconH wrote:
lol why wouldn't the U.S. print money?
They have the license to print gold.
U.S. currency is Gold. The entire world depends on it and that's not going to change any time soon.
China can keep complaining... and keep buying billions of treasuries. Currency collapses do not happen overnight but we are seeing a steady diminishing of the USD purchasing power.Gold was USD$300 back in 2000 and now it is around USD$1700.Back in the early 1970s when the dollar was backed by gold the price of gold was USD$35.Just because something is true today does not mean it will be true in one, five or ten years time. Also the top holder of US treasuries is now the US Federal Reserve and not China.Basically the FED is printing money and using it to buy US treasuries and bonds.How can you claim that is sustainable? The situation is getting worse not better. You sure our purchasing power has been going down steadily? When I take $2,000 from 1970 and apply it to 2012, well, I've got more money! (Even from 2000 to 2012, it grew!) Why would the government do something that is unsustainable? Do they not know what they are doing? (How did they get into a position if they didn't know what they were doing?) Do they hate America? Do they just not care? Why wouldn't the government take the steps necessary to ensure the survival of this nation? The rounds of quantitative easing have been to combat hyper-deflation. Some people will literally start yelling at you in the face in the real world if you present them with this. (If this happens, don't present the facts, because you may be strangled beyond death.) November's rate was 1.8, with our target being either 2 or 2.2% Just because you have it doesn't mean it is good on you. Proof that gold was growing in terms of price per ounce or whatever does not mean your purchasing power is growing steadily. It actually might mean the opposite in certain respects. If you could theoretically have bought a gold ounce for 35 usd 30 years ago, but now it would need around 1500 usd just to pay for the same gold ounce, then you could actually say the usd doesn't have the same value as in the past to purchase the same product. Granted, there is inflation and demand that drives up the price so we can take that example into mortgaged back housing. A house you purchased at year A is worth 40k (initially). After say a 5 or 10 year period since demand was higher for your area, lets say it is now 100k (speculative projection). Now you could look at that and say, I've made 60k. Well, that 60k only applies, if you've already paid for the house and no other loans are stuck on to your house, right? So aren't treasury bonds working in the same way wherein they are "technically" selling a portion of the worth of the gold they have in paper as a commitment to back their loans? So you could say a 1500 usd per gold ounce has already been loaned out for say 1200 usd per ounce. Then that would mean you only really have 300 usd per ounce left to use or claim as "your own". I know this is too simplistic but it should give you an idea on how spending just because you believe you have said amount at X year is not right. you have to take into account was is actually left for you to spend. And to say that government knows what they are doing is not necessarily true. Every action logically has a reaction to be expected. So pushing the problem onto the next generation would be what is being viewed as the "reaction" of this action by the US. So you may not be the one to suffer, but the next generation would be the ones to suffer as they have no way to play around with number like the current generation has done. That's my two cents I'm a bit lost. First, what is it that I have that's not good for me? Secondly, are you making the value of the dollar be directly related to gold? I'm not saying that. Are you saying that T-Bills are gold or something? Man, I haven't been this confused in the longest time. I was saying that if I have $1,000 USD, just straight up ten 100 dollar bills, it would be over $10,000 today from the 1970s. I didn't buy the dollars with euros or yen. I worked for it and kept it. I'm not saying I'm holding gold over that time. Not at all. I think that's his point, though. The value of money is defined by what you can do with it; that's purchasing power. You can be buying gold or other stuff, it doesn't really matter. The dollar's value is directly related to what it can get you. If you had worked for $1000 cash in the 70s and kept it under your mattress since then, you don't have more money at the end. You actually just have the $1000 you started with, because it's been sitting under your bed, untouched. Moreover, in the 70s, you might have been able to use that money to buy a car; now it might get you a TV. Far from growing, its value has plummeted. Simply put, $1000 in the 70s being worth $10,000 today does not mean the dollar is stronger. It actually means the dollar is "weaker", because you need more money to buy the same thing.
Well, yes you're right. I had it backwards. From 1970, the /DX was valued at around $120. Today, it's at $80. If I had put in $1000 of 1970's money into the /DX, I would actually have less today. I'm assuming there's a correlation there. However, I wasn't talking about literally putting my money under a mattress.
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EPT
