America's Biggest Problem

[lawrocket 3]

Seriously - the A&M fight song is the ONLY fight song whose words I actually know because I put up with daily renditions of it for weeks on end.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[billvon 2,990]

>Might be numerically true but things are different now IMO

Oh, a great many things are different. But the US is made up of people, not computers or cars - and the people are, by and large, the same.

>So we are now doing better?

Yes. You can quibble on the details, but it peaked at the end of 2009 and is several percentage points lower now.

>This mathematical magic needs to stop and the people need the truth . . .Only then
>will the voters do the right thing

The right wing tried this during the last election; publishing their own numbers so they could "convince" people to vote for their candidate. It didn't work too well. Turns out that hope doesn't actually change those numbers.

[rushmc 23]

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>Might be numerically true but things are different now IMO

Oh, a great many things are different. But the US is made up of people, not computers or cars - and the people are, by and large, the same.

>So we are now doing better?

Yes. You can quibble on the details, but it peaked at the end of 2009 and is several percentage points lower now.

Yes, people, who, some hundreds of thousands of them, are no longer looking for work... .... .... because they can not find it

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[DanG 1]

Please show me where the government reported that a 0.2% change in unemployment should mean 600,000 new jobs.

You made that number up, or got it from some pundit. It is wrong.

- Dan G

[rushmc 23]

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Please show me where the government reported that a 0.2% change in unemployment should mean 600,000 new jobs.

You made that number up, or got it from some pundit. It is wrong.

Ya, it most likely is wrong
It should be higher

from the link

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(The raw numbers without seasonal adjustment were that unemployed people rose from 12.7 million in December to 13.5 million in January, for a net of 800,000 people losing their jobs in the real world, with the cheery and widely reported 0.2% single month decline in unemployment existing only inside the adjustments within the models.)

http://danielamerman.com/articles/2012/WorkC.html

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[DrewEckhardt 0]

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> I am sure that you could apply the Magic of Arithmetic to evaluate our current plight.
>Do the numbers - we're scrod.

We are indeed between a rock and a hard place.

However, we have been this "screwed" before and recovered.

Nope. Back then we didn't have the structural issues which face us now.

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Unemployment was far higher during the Great Depression - and we recovered.

Back then we had a national economy without lots of 5-10X+ differences in pay for the same work (the railroads fixed that) based on geography and costs of living to go with that. American companies were American. Now we live in a big global economy where a young engineer in the SF bay area (41% of venture capital in 2011 went to Silicon Valley; it's where the jobs are) can afford a 1-2 bedroom apartment and 1/5 his wages buys one in India a villa with hired help although the two are potentially fungible (They don't yet have the same institutional learning that we have here where good people have worked with good experienced people and passed on that knowledge, although that will change as people pick that up here and go back home, some with both US wages and radically lower costs of living). As of this year IBM has just 1/4 of its employees here and has more people in India than America.

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Our debt (as a ratio of GDP) was far higher after WWII - and we recovered.

Back then we were much of the first world, the second world of communist bloc countries did its own thing, and the third world consisting of everyone else was an undeveloped back water that might make trinkets but otherwise didn't have much effect on us. We had a trade surplus.

The Soviet Union collapsed trying to keep up with our defense spending and its constituent countries now complete with us. China realized they'd do better fighting us in the market place. Tsinghua University graduates are as competent as Americans. The third world countries are now emerging markets which often have reasonable education systems and decent technological infrastructure that allow them to build most of what we need and want (for much less money). China and India together have 2 billion people competing against us. We have a big trade deficit.

Perhaps more significantly back then pretty much everyone could do something economically worth while. Affordable automation means that's no longer the case.

Manufacturing jobs are on their way out - even Foxconn plans to have a million robots deployed by 2014. I get shop time for under $100/month including CNC router, 4 axis vertical mill with tool changer, laser cutter, and water jet use (you provide your own cutting tools and pay for water jet abrasive). A couple entrepreneurs didn't need any employees when they used one of these community shops for a little home business cranking out six figures worth of smart phone car mounts. University of Washington students 3D printed themselves a boat to enter in a recycled milk jug regatta.

Farming is on its way out - advances in machine vision are allowing automated crop picking and weeding that will be price competitive with migrant workers.

Even many "intellectual" jobs can be taken over by machines. Expert systems can outperform civil engineers and doctors in some situations and are getting better. There's an X prize to make a tricorder. Regulations will initially limit human replacement, although political forces make change likely (the insurance and pharmaceutical industries have more to spend on lobbyists than the AMA).

We're approaching a time when only intellectual property creation has value at a large scale and there won't be enough of a market for things like bespoke hand made luxury yacht interiors to support a sizeable work force.

We should have a few local maxima left although any "recovery" cannot last without radical societal changes to accommodate the new reality.

[billvon 2,990]

>Back then we didn't have . . .
>Back then we had a . . .
>We're approaching a time . . .

All those thing are true. We face challenges we've never had before - and we have opportunities we've never had before.

But that doesn't make us unique. During the Great Depression, the percentage of immigrants were very high, due to the prosperity of the roaring 20's and the various famines in Europe. How could the US ever deal with a record number of non-Americans refusing to melt in the melting pot, bringing their lazy escapist ways to the US? This had never happened before!

We were also losing our skilled labor. Ford's production line changed the demands on labor forever. No longer were craftsmen needed to build cars; now they just needed assembly line workers, each trained to do one very simple step 2000 times a day. Tighten a few bolts. Feed sheet metal into a bender. What would the US do, now that skill was no longer needed for our industry?

Also, just before the Great Depression we had the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1920. Half a million Americans died. "Modern" travel allowed it to spread rapidly throughout the world. This had never happened before! How could the US survive in a world where ships - the vehicles of international trade - brought plagues that could wipe out the US?

At the same time there were signs that things were looking up. Rural electrification was bringing electricity to most of the US. Cars as personal transportation were not yet common but were starting to appear in the driveways of the upper middle class. The Model T was in production and starting to change the face of American roads (and cities, and villages.)

Farming was being revolutionized with hybrid crops, intensive fertilization and irrigation. Communication was changing with the advent of the telephone. It was now not uncommon to be able to call California from New York (when conditions were good, that is.)

And the most important thing - we had won the Great War, the war that ended all wars. It was common knowledge that we would never again fight a war that involved the entire world. It was (we assumed) a new era of global peace.

So there were a lot of negatives - problem people had never ever seen before. Global pandemics killing millions! Immigrants taking over the US! Historically high unemployment! The end of skilled labor! How would we ever recover?

But we had a few indications that things were looking up, and that our industry would continue to advance. Peace would ring out throughout the world. Cars would change society.

Now the negatives are different, as are the hopes on the horizon. But the underlying uncertainties, and the hopes for the future, aren't. Every generation is sure that they _know_ that they are witnessing the end; the end is nigh and has been for hundreds of years. But every time they do that the next generation proves them wrong. I don't see any reason that can't continue.

[SStewart 13]

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At this minute, America's biggest problem is that Notre Dame is in the BCS championship game with Alabama when the Aggies beat Alabama, Notre Dame is a joke and Johnny Football just won the statue.

Tomorrow the problem will be more important, but this is just this moment.

And the Oregon Ducks could easily beat Alabama, Notre Dame, or the Aggies by like 52 -3

Onward and Upward!

[vortexring 0]

Education.

I'd suggest the biggest problem seems to be the 'dumbing down' of the general American populace. A Vietnam vet I was working with recently reckoned the problem lies with schooling. So did his buddies. It just so happened I agreed.

Besides. How many voted for Mitt?

Jeezus.

'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

[Gravitymaster 0]

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Education.

I'd suggest the biggest problem seems to be the 'dumbing down' of the general American populace. A Vietnam vet I was working with recently reckoned the problem lies with schooling. So did his buddies. It just so happened I agreed.

Besides. How many voted for Mitt?

Jeezus.

Good point. If our population was more educated, Mitt would have won. Instead, the uneducated masses put a child with a credit card back in because he promised to buy them presents.

[fanya 3]

Entitlement is americas biggest problem.

[rehmwa 2]

clearly it's arrogant people that think only they know the answer and want to force everyone else to think like them

I'm sure this is it - people just need to follow my advice. or we can legislate it if they refuse to

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[quade 4]

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Education.
I'd suggest the biggest problem seems to be the 'dumbing down' of the general American populace. A Vietnam vet I was working with recently reckoned the problem lies with schooling. So did his buddies. It just so happened I agreed.

The problem with that is how you even define "education." I'm not kidding either. Is it "Texas Schoolbook" education? Godless, atheist science? Creationism? History written by the "winners" or revisionist history written by others later?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billvon 2,990]

> If our population was more educated, Mitt would have won.

Nothing like contempt for the voters to win you the next election. Worked well last time.

[Remster 30]

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> If our population was more educated, Mitt would have won.

Nothing like contempt for the voters to win you the next election. Worked well last time.

And of course, its completely on point... http://static.happyplace.com/assets/images/2012/11/509bedacdc6e5.jpeg

Remster

[rushmc 23]

I see these two stories defining a big part of the problems

http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/121012-636426-americans-figure-out-public-employees-have-it-better-than-private-workers.htm#ixzz2EhDuT2Qk

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You may have noticed some economic difficulties across the country in recent years among family, friends, neighbors, colleagues. One sector is doing quite nicely, however, under Barack Hussein Obama.

In the 1,420 days since he took the oath of office, the federal government has daily hired on average 101 new employees. Every day. Seven days a week. All 202 weeks. That makes 143,000 more federal workers than when Obama talked forever on that cold day in January of 2009.

Under Obama the total federal workforce has surpassed two million for the first time since the first Clinton term, now sitting about the 2.2 ,million level.

Now comes a new poll revealing that Americans know what's going on. A majority of Americans believes government workers make more money than private sector workers, according to the new Rasmussen Reports poll. Sixty-one percent of private sector workers believe that.

and

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/75-percent-obamas-proposed-tax-hikes-go-toward-new-spending_666067.html

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75 Percent of Obama's Proposed Tax Hikes to Go Toward New Spending

Which still indicates a spending problem and not a revenue problem

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[Gravitymaster 0]

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> If our population was more educated, Mitt would have won.

Nothing like contempt for the voters to win you the next election. Worked well last time.

I'm not running for anything. I couldn't care less that someone gets butt-hurt over the truth.

[Gravitymaster 0]

Problem with your stats is States don't vote. People vote.

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ZOGBY SAMPLE - 512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points, 97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions - Answer is either yes or no, or Biden, McCain, Obama, Palin.

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

[Remster 30]

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Problem with your stats is States don't vote. People vote.

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ZOGBY SAMPLE - 512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points, 97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 simple Multiple Choice Questions - Answer is either yes or no, or Biden, McCain, Obama, Palin.

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....

Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes

Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter

And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!

Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.

Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)

That is freaking hilarious dude! Thanks!

Remster

[billvon 2,990]

> I couldn't care less that someone gets butt-hurt over the truth.

As long as you couldn't care less that your party will become inconsequential, no worries.

[wmw999 2,444]

And I'll bet that most people don't know that Romney hasn't stopped beating his wife.

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[rushmc 23]

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And I'll bet that most people don't know that Romney hasn't stopped beating his wife.

Wendy P.

when did he start?

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[billvon 2,990]

>when did he start?

See? You would have gotten that question wrong.

[Remster 30]

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And I'll bet that most people don't know that Romney hasn't stopped beating his wife.

Wendy P.

when did he start?

That's right! We need to establish when Romney started to beat his wife.

Remster

[rushmc 23]

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>when did he start?

See? You would have gotten that question wrong.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln