REAGANOMICS:
Now we have a new version old phrase coming from the right side of the coin. “Trickle down economics, the bastion of Republican reform. But, Reaganomics 101 and the world economical and political picture don’t seem to be on the same page.
Why, because someone rewrote the book. In the US we did get a little lazy and the world stepped up their game. We are not the only players anymore.
The Republicans continually offer trickle down economics as a way of re-development in this country. Fine if you look at the economy and carefully at the middle class of that era. It’s simply not the same world. We are very much in competition with ourselves. We trained the world to do better and now they do it better than us.
Let me best explain this a different way. When you were born if you are middle age or older, your world consisted of a circle perhaps in a diameter equal to a days march. Those events occurring outside that diameter rarely had an effect on you. In todays economy and literally the world this is not true anymore in the United States.
The food you eat, the clothes you wear, the gas you buy, the computers and TV's you use, the watch you wear, your shoes, the drywall in your home, the nails and screws that hold your house together, the parts in the car you drive or the car itself, all came from some other part of the world. All by companies that have US names and foreign workers.
In a Reagan world the US companies would get the breaks and funds only to be used by the foreign workers.
THE GREAT ORATOR
They quote former President Reagan so we will assume they are of the same thinking and skill set of the late President. Not so. They are of the partisan thinking set, a distorted idea that says, we rise due to others failures.
They wish us to think their ideas and ideals are rooted in success. It's psychologically pacifying to quote a better time and era and the mind is happy again, so they think. And that’s why these buffoons in Washington are always quoting Reagan. Truth is they don't have answers for today. They are firing blanks, big blanks.
These full time shysters and goniffs know the buzzwords and clichés ad nauseam. "The Party of Reagan", "The Eleventh Commandment" "Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev". 'They believe in quoting the Great Communicator so we will assume the brilliance of the man and his financial moves trickled down to who is referencing Reagan and it will work again in the same fashion.
TRICKLE OR TINKLE
History repeats itself, but only when the circumstance is the same. When the circumstance changes, sometimes the outcomes are different. That’s why in football they usually do not run the same play two times in a row unless you are Tampa Bay and that’s why they are 3-12. ( see Einstein definition of insanity)
Trickle down economy works when you have a path to trickle. That path was also known as the Middle class, virtually non-existent today. Destroyed by the American corporate greed, personal greed, and union greed, political greed, greed in general is to blame. Everybody got greedy.
So, today without a middle class, “Trickle down Economics” refers to living on the ground floor of a two-story out-house. More like “Tinkle Down Economics”.
There inherently is the problem, the trickle will go to the investors and the importers. The middle class kept that money in the states. You got paid, you went out to eat, you bought shoes and clothing, you went to the dry cleaner, you got your teeth cleaned, you went on vacation, you played golf, you owned a small boat, you went fishing, you could afford the car wash, you had a full freezer, TV’s all over the house and you were happy.
You spent money here that was turned over again by the dry cleaner and the car wash people who spent it on others here. The key word is here. The same dollar got used many times.
Millions of Americans watched their jobs go overseas and their jobs and dreams vanish because that dollar didn’t stay here. I used to work in Montego Bay, Jamaica, but I lived on a company sustenance because if you earn money in Jamaica, it stays in Jamaica. My US paycheck went into my American account and I had an attached credit card if I needed something which was rare. Sort of the Vegas theory. Their profits stayed in Jamaica. A small country needs some form of protectionism. So do big countries. So they bought condos there. Their money made money.
PARTNERS
Today almost everything has the word China or other offshore stamped on the back. Why? So the American Corporations make more profit, and the stock market grows with those profits. BUT the profits go to the investors, not the workers since the workers are NOT THERE.
So when we, as buyers, spend money into the system, seventy-eight percent of every hundred dollars goes overseas. Then it comes back in loans to us. Is every body blind as to what happening?
The GREAT WALL-MART of CHINA.
Wal-Mart is probably the best example. When we had Mom and Pop stores we had only forty two percent of the dollars went away or out of the country. Literally four-fifths or more of our economy dollars you spend vanishes each time you shop at Wal-mart and every time the stock market goes up a few points.
Since the Republicans and Democrats have their hands invested through lobbyists in almost every major corporation that looks good, the more money that goes into them means better profits for our Congressmen and Senators. It’s about greed. It always has been greed, it’s nothing to do about serving the country. It’s career and money and greed on both sides of the coin.
“MADE-OUT IN AMERICA”
Remember the car industry, those great days of FORD and CHEVY, and the production of almost anything like washers and dryers, radios, TV, furniture, carpeting, clothing, shoes, tables, chairs and food, consumer items that were the strength of American production. These were the jobs that supported the middle class. So I state again, what middle class?
Wake up America, they are gone. Their part of America was funneled to the stockholders. The rich got rich, the workers got pink slips. That’s what made the stock market recover, the infusion of all those dollars that never made it to the workers plus the Government gave them anything they wanted. And they want to take that taxpayer money and give bonuses to the same folks who bankrupted the nation. Shame!
Wall Street and the investors are not for the people. The bonuses are still getting paid. The stocks went back up, breaking 10,500 points and no jobs came from it. The middle class bailed out the holders. The top end gets as much as the corporation see's fit to pay the rest. What a gift. They lose the empire and we buy it back for them.
HOW OTHERS DO IT:
I am beginning to see the wisdom of some foreign political systems, and the Kalashnikov theory of keeping folks honest. lets see how the world would react if this happened there.
• CHINA - Had this happened in China, the principal responsible would be shot or probably do it himself.
• JAPAN - Fell on a sword, he didn’t trip either. They call "saving face".
• RUSSIA - In Russia, they just vanish, vacation at Gulag13, or Joseph Stalin just shot them.
• FRANCE - Riots and the real good old days, of the "guillotine".
• GERMANY - The "firing squads".
• MIDDLE EAST - swift beheading.
• USA; Here we bail them out and give them a raise for their incompetence and greed.
NEW JOBS:
We talk about jobs and new startups. What a dialog of horse manure. Innovation, is the answer but we are failing in the battle for the leadership role in innovation. The Japanese for one are the innovators, they design the toys we buy, from cars to Wii, and then it gets into production in China.
We are not the great innovators alone in the world, get it. These other countries in the BRIC can and do create the new toys and electronics we blow our dollars on.
What new store can compete against a Wal-Mart? Rephrase; What new stores can compete against a Wal-mart, as there are fifty plus stores under one roof, paying minimal wages for the employees, with products built under the market in both labor costs and quality. I remember, Sam Walton saying many times, In our store, it‘s “Made in America”. He got to be doing two and half gainers in the grave.
THE GRAND GIVER:
We are slowly being bled to death by the protectionism given to our trading partners. What tariffs, the Chinese sub product, or partial product diverts to Mexico first, where it is then assembled, and comes into the country on the George W. Bush Highway.
He even promoted an eight lane highway stretching from Mexico to Canada. The AFL-CIO drivers stopped that one. They had no trouble finding enough baseball bats and Springfield's to stop that brain-fart.
The AMERICAN PEOPLE have been sold out by corporate greed, bad treaties that got by the check-stop oversight committees, the good old boys greed, and willing Congressmen and Senators, our most adoring greedy group.
UNFAIR PRACTICES
I attend the Photo Marketing Association, International show every year. One manufacturer of tripods, who build excellent products, Manfrotto/Bogen usually has a very nice display of their product on display. One aisle over the identical product, cloned is on display from Taiwan at half the price. One aisle further and the Chinese mainland knockoffs are on display at a third of Manfrotto’s price.
And if we switched labels the casual buyer would not know the difference. Perfect knock-offs. You can’t stop it, or don’t want to, radify or stop the abuse. We owe them money, and I believe, that was the reason they were so happy to lend us money. Oh did you know they also own our oil futures.
NAFTA BECAME SHAFTA.
How did this mess get created?
STEP ONE - President and Cigar Aficionado William Jefferson Clinton opened the door, in a horrific one-sided deal to a treaty called NAFTA. One of the worst treaties we agreed to.
The expression the devil is in the details goes a long way here. Clinton opened the door and left the keys and the padlock on the table.
STEP TWO - President George W. Bush found the keys, enlarged the door to a railroad tunnel size, and sent the CHINESE WAL ORIENT EXPRESS through it, and maybe thats why we borrow much of our money from China for the war. George had to pay for the war and not make it part of our economy. We owe the Chinese a lot. They are killing us economically and with red lead paint.
Eight years of war run up the tabs very quickly. And of course it's money we can't talk about as the former President made sure most of it is covered under the various need to know acts.
Interested Americans do need to know...it’s over a trillion, thats with a “T”. It finally made the papers. Don't blame President OBAMA for this one. The reasons for the Iraq-Afghan war are still cloudy to this day. And many would prefer keeping it this way. "The truth hurts" my Mom used to say, "Especially when it's tied to a rope around your neck". Now there's one Stalin would of liked.
CNN MONEY- NEW YORK
(CNNMoney.com) -- As the Iraq/Afghanistan/ Yemen/ Pakistan war continues with no clear end in sight, the cost to taxpayers may balloon to $2.7 trillion by the time the conflict comes to an end, according to Congressional testimony.
We owe China about another trillion (what we are worth on paper and gas futures) for a war. That’s the real legacy. That’s what funded part of this mess, which did not have to be disclosed under Bush disclosure rules, endorsed by Cheney and audited by Carl Rove. That’s where part of the cover-up is. It was then President George Bush who told us everything was wonderful till a week before the crash. How do you lose trillions in a week?
His administration never was transparent and many of the things that occurred during that administration will come to the surface. And they are not pretty. When I hear a Congressman lamenting about how this is our kids future... hold on, this damage was already done, just in the works growing for the past eight years and you Mr. Congressman and Senator might have been or were part of it.
The truth is about the cash war. It is a war of money spent, money borrowed that John Q. Public did not know about. It will have to be paid back somehow. Add the billions paid to the mercenaries amidst other costs yet to surface and you’ll see the real mess the last administration put us in.
LIFE HAS SIMPLE RULES
Next year some will die; some will starve; some will be beaten down and enslaved and some will pick up a weapon and become the tool of destruction in revenge or use that weapon in a fight for independence. That’s reality. It's based on strength.
Economics works the same way it’s the strong that control. It’s not that we have weakened. It’s a world market that is bigger and stronger and accelerating. We have competition now. When "Bush the First" spoke of the New World Order, many of the less informed individuals envisioned a bunch of goose-stepping neocons ruling the world like the "Third or Fourth Reich". Was it mis-interpretation or poor communication?
Had they read the papers on the New World Order? It was about financial shifts in trade and the strength of countries of the world. A balance of power and fair-trading of the resources, they were told, someone was dreaming. Nevertheless instead of a chicken in every pot there was an AR-15 in every closet.
So is world leadership not by force, but by economics? Possibly but while we are engaged in a war and nation building, which will stretch into decades, and complete breaking of our financial system, the world is changing. The other players are picking up a lot of our slack, going through a quiet revolution, and we are not the only ones in contention for world leadership. We are fiddling, burning down Rome, and texting while the world is moving on.