Nations Debt Bad News

point is, she has little to no credibility on this. yeah, she has a mentally challenged kid, but she has turned it political. go after rahm for saying “that’s retarded” in private, but give rush a pass when he says something to the affect of, “liberals are retards” and “nothing wrong with calling retards retards” c’mon.

it is frustrating that you can’t be middle class without two incomes. I’m personally frustrated by that.

But the problem with raw earning power as you seem to be describing it is that it is relative. When you talk about your dad at work, mom at home, and two kids it was easy to be average because EVERY family was the same way. Now, women more or less stay in the work force, and so “average” is that both parents work. Since you have two incomes, the median family income is probably 70-80% higher, but again, since it is that way for everyone, inflation kicks in (particularly with regard to limited resources) and we’re back to where we started, except now with twice as many people “at work”. In a sense, your description of middle class is a zero sum game. You can’t stay average

Again, I’d argue that this is a choice our society made – essentially doubling the size of the workforce had huge social benefits to women (improved work environments, marriage no longer a requirement for livelihood, etc), but as a result the median lifestyle (thus middle class) went to a two worker one. I don’t think this is a fundamental failure of our economic system. Just a shift in our values as a society. And as I pointed out above, I think that our overall quality of life has improved across the board over the same time frame.

Cars need to be new (often), houses need to be bigger, everyone has iphones, everyone pays for TV, everyone has internet, 4 TVs, ipod, etc., etc. It just seems like people “need” a lot more now. It’s very consumer driven. If your cell phone is two years old there’s something wrong with you. There’s a huge sense of keeping up with the Jones’s.

When I was kid (I’m only 36) TV was over the air, cars were always used and all that other stuff was unheard of.

“Traditional needs” have become relatively more expensive to our society because those industries haven’t grown along with our population. Our basic requirements, which seem to be what we’re discussing, have gotten more expensive. But that is because in the past 30-40 years, our country hasn’t focused on keeping food, housing, etc cheap. Instead, the industries that have grown are the same industries I was talking about – technology, health care, services. I don’t see how you can say that we haven’t been diverting earning power into those areas – those are the driving forces of growth in this country.

To parallel to baseball, to say “gee, our generation is worse off than our parents was” is like saying “the 2010 Rangers are going to suck, look at their offense compared to five years ago.” Yeah, of course that is right. The offense is worse now. The things dad spent money on have gotten more expensive. But that is meaningless unless you look at the full picture. You can’t ignore technology and the ridiculous investment our country has made in it

I believe current prevailing wisdom is that actions by the government or Fed take 6-18 months to take effect. The more expected it is (for instance, when everyone knows rates are going to be lowered), the quicker and milder the adjustment period is.

Everything I’ve ever heard and read suggests DoD is by far the most wasteful institution in our government. I have a feeling they could do the same job with a lot less money, but Congress won’t go after it because they’d be skewered in campaigns for being “soft on defense”.

Social Security Disability is ripe with fraud and waste but nobody ever seems to do anything about it. I know a lady who collects a bunch of money in SSD and her husband makes $150k per year. Since they have kids she receives several thousand per month. I don’t understand how this is allowed to happen.

I’ll fine tune it, and post it later.

…I’m out of business. Bankrupt. It’s been a hell of a week.