To be fair though, the economies of the US and say Greece are far different. For one, the US makes enough capital to normally sustain itself, Greece is mainly funded by Germany if anything. (I'm not bashing on Greece) I do agree, Romney is a joke of a candidate but this isn't that much of a Dichotomy for an American Voter unless you reside in one of the Swing states. Being in California, I'm voting a 3rd party.
Can you find any evidence that all that government "stimulus" has done anything though? From what I have read there seems to be very little evidence that it has made any kind of improvement at all.
If you look at the history, the number of filibusters have been going up with each sucessive Senate. Plus the mumnber of votes blocked etc can be misleading as many are designed to fail so congressmen and senator can record votes on varius issues, that help thier ratings with various groups, while not actually enacting or blocking any policy. Lets face it, on the big issue, the defecit, he announced Simpson Bowles as a bipartisan effort and then ignored it's recommendations. They waited for the house budget plan and then tried to hang Ryan for attempting to do something about the afforability of Medicare. Now I think any budget that leaves social security off the table (as with Ryan's plan) is hardly adressing the issues but it was a starting place if anyone actually wanted to negociate a sensible budget.
Of the 15 studies this Washington Post article mentions http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...esnt-work-here-are-the-studies-they-left-out/ 12 say it worked, 1 says it fell within the margin of error, and 2 says that it didn't. Surprisingly large consensus for a soft science like economics.
The Senate filibuster is a rule where a member can require a super-majority of votes to pass a bill. That number is 60 out of the 100 senators. After the 2008 election, Republicans disputed the Minnesota race, which was not settled for nearly six months. During that time, the balance was 59-41 favoring the Democrats. Sen. Ted Kennedy became ill and cast his last vote in April, which made those available to vote 58-41. In July, Sen. Al Franken was finally sworn in for Minnesota. This would have meant a supermajority, except Kennedy was unable to vote and the Senate does not allow for proxies. This meant it was still 59-40. The Senate went into summer recess 08/07/2009 to 09/08/2009 and on August 26th, Sen. Ted Kennedy died. Kennedy's replacement was sworn in on September 25th, finally making it 60-40, enough for a super-majority if everyone towed the party line. Then the Senate adjourned for the year on October 9th. This meant only eleven working days of a super-majority between September 25 and October 9. Scott Brown was elected to Kennedy's seat in November 2009. The Senate was in session for ten days in January, 2010 and Brown was sworn in on February 4, 2010. Brown is a Republican, so the Democrats had a super-majority for 13 working days in 2010. Also remember that Sen. Joe Lieberman is an Independent but is counted as a Democrat for the super-majority. Although Lieberman is liberal on some issues, he is very conservative on others. He cannot be counted on to vote with Democrats to break the filibuster. So there you go. It actually comes out to only 24 working days with the super-majority between 2009 and 2010.
With two days left I wish all the best to the american people. The disastrous state of the USA-economy is a hard nut to crack, but it's definately not the fault of Obama, but a fault of the capitalism and the profit-oriented companies. It's the same problem in Europe, where lots of industry has closed down to rebuild the factories in China or in eastern Europe because of the lower costs there. What the USA is lacking in comparison to most european countries is a good working social system though. And it amuses me that alot of american people call the social-systems of european countries socialism or communism. So with all due respect, I hope that the american people elect Obama for another 4 years, so that they might have a chance for some needed social reforms. Economy is pretty much nothing that can be fixed by the government anyways, as the greedy companies are the ones to blame in that case. Americans should look at Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden or Finland for how a social economy works. And it has nothing to do with socialism or communism at all, if the strong support the weak, by paying a little more tax. When I want to see a doctor, I don't have to think about insurances or anything at all. When I loose my job, I know that there's an office for unemployed that helps me find another job or get new education... fo free. And if I don't find a job or cannot work anymore, then there's the social office that pays up for my basic needs. If that's socialism, then hell yeah I love socialism and laugh about the american people who think it's something evil. I'm watching tons of stuff surrounding the US-elections for the last three or four weeks, and I've allways been interested in the US-systems and how they work compared to European ones. I for sure never wanted to live in the US the way it is, and I hope for the american people that Romney is not the winner in three days to come, as this would only make things even worse.
I'm curious as to how a general reduction in the price of goods due to the reduction in production costs is causing economic woes?
All production costs are ultimately the result of someone's paycheck and the number of hours it takes for them to contribute to your product. If the plastic in your computer costs $5, that's because it cost a company a $1 in wage-hours to turn $4 worth of fuel into your component. Each of these segments can be further broken down to a nearly infinite degree to give you the total cost of the thousand people associated in assembling your final product. When you find ways to reduce production costs, that means that somebody, and likely a lot of people are being paid a lot less to do their job in the end and maybe they had been fired. This doesn't impact me, unless I'm one of those people. At which point I am no longer able to buy the product. If you have ten-million people wanting to buy your widgets and only a million to sell, everything works out and you can make these reductions, but if that customer pool shrinks because their average wages have gone down, you begin to experience a back log.
Reduction of the price is usually done by cutting the cost of manufacturing the product. Costs for production include the ressources needed, the energy spent to run the machines, packaging, marketing and finally the wages for the employees. If we look at the parts involved, we come to the conclusion that theres only two aspects we can cut down to lower the costs... marketing and wages. Usally it's the wages that get cut to lower the cost of production. Now, by cutting the wages, people have less and less money to consume products and this is the reason for why theres so many economic woes in the end. The companies, who are producing their products overseas in eastern-europe or asia only do this because of the lower wages, which results in less jobs and less people consuming, finally resulting in less taxes. And every company manufacturing something usually has several companies tied in, and this results in even more jobs lost or being paid less, with less power to consume and less taxes. So the country and the people loose just because of the companies trying to make more profits. When Romney wins this election, then this process will speed up, and even if there might be an increase in jobs, which we allready see happening now under Obama, these new jobs will be paid bad not resulting in any more consume or increased taxes. People need to understand how a healthy economy is based on well paid jobs and the possibility to consume more goods. So every government needs to work towards a stronger inner economy, and preventing companies to manufacture overseas. We might call it protectionism, but it's the only part where the government can actually do something to strengthen the countries economy. Lowering taxes will not help anything there, as the government needs taxes to keep the country and the social systems running. I'm sorry to say, but the US-government of the last 20 years has basically done everything wrong, and not just them, but all of the european governments aswell. Strengthening the own economy by protecting it against countries that attack your own economy with cheap workforce is the only right thing to do, and theres only very few countries doing that actually. Norway does this for example, and they're the wealthiest country in the western world!
Protectionism The simplest example is the agricultural revolution. Society has gone from a majority being engaged in subsidence agriculture to ~2% in the developed world. No one can describe that process as a bad thing. People instead gained employment in manufacture and so the price of previously luxury goods decrease and they become everyday items for the majority. The fact the same process has been happening in the manufacturing sector is a bad thing though? Society will create new job providing service while we can enjoy the benefits of cheap goods. A simple thought experiment is imagine you local town suddenly stuck a 20% import duty on everything entering. It obviously wouldn't improve living standards. Now say its a county. It would also be an awful things. But applied the same reasoning to a country and its a brilliant idea?
You sure don't have any clou about your statements, do you? The agricultural revolution led to a situation, where the bigger part of the world nowadays suffers from, as every western government pumps billions of dollars into their agriculture susidizing it. Food is atleast 30% to cheap these days in the western industrialized countries. Without the subsidies the food would be at the right level actually, but it would also led to a situation, where it would be cheaper to import more food, then to produce it in the western industrialized countries. So, protectionism is allready happening in this sector with a huge impact on the worlds not so wealthy countries. Especially since people started to play with wheat and corn on the stock-markets. The amount of new jobs that need to be created in the service-sector to compensate for the loss of manufacturing and agriculture is way bigger then just a 1:1 ratio. Additionally, what new services would there be actually? You don't need more services. There's actually too much services these days allready, which is why the jobs in this sector get paid less and less for. People in this sector are often working for under €5 per hour, which is only half of the money you need to cover your basics, even with 40 hours per week working. €1000 netto a month is the bare minimum you need to be able to consume more then the very basics, atleast in northern europe. The minimum you get from social services in germany or finland is somewhere around €500, but you get additonal money for paying your rent etc, so it's close to €700 actually. And this doesn't allow for anything else then the basics like food, a small apartment and your electrical bill. Learn about economics and costs of living first I suggest.
You haven't addressed what I stated... Quite simply its easier and clearer if I just plug Wikipedia here. Protectionism - Free Trade isn't a new argument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism#Arguments_against_protectionism Protectionism is frequently criticized by mainstream economists as harming the people it is meant to help. Most mainstream economists instead support free trade.[6][9] Economic theory, under the principle of comparative advantage, shows that the gains from free trade outweigh any losses as free trade creates more jobs than it destroys because it allows countries to specialize in the production of goods and services in which they have a comparative advantage.[14] Protectionism results in deadweight loss; this loss to overall welfare gives no-one any benefit, unlike in a free market, where there is no such total loss. According to economist Stephen P. Magee, the benefits of free trade outweigh the losses by as much as 100 to 1.[15] Most economists, including Nobel prize winners Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman, believe that free trade helps workers in developing countries, even though they are not subject to the stringent health and labour standards of developed countries. This is because "the growth of manufacturing — and of the myriad other jobs that the new export sector creates — has a ripple effect throughout the economy" that creates competition among producers, lifting wages and living conditions.[16] Economists[who?] have suggested that those who support protectionism ostensibly to further the interests of workers in least developed countries are in fact being disingenuous, seeking only to protect jobs in developed countries.[17] Additionally, workers in the least developed countries only accept jobs if they are the best on offer, as all mutually consensual exchanges must be of benefit to both sides, or else they wouldn't be entered into freely. That they accept low-paying jobs from companies in developed countries shows that their other employment prospects are worse. A letter reprinted in the May 2010 edition of Econ Journal Watch identifies a similar sentiment against protectionism from sixteen British economists at the beginning of the 20th century.[18] Alan Greenspan, former chair of the American Federal Reserve, has criticized protectionist proposals as leading "to an atrophy of our competitive ability. ... If the protectionist route is followed, newer, more efficient industries will have less scope to expand, and overall output and economic welfare will suffer."[19] Protectionism has also been accused of being one of the major causes of war. Proponents of this theory point to the constant warfare in the 17th and 18th centuries among European countries whose governments were predominantly mercantilist and protectionist, the American Revolution, which came about ostensibly due to British tariffs and taxes, as well as the protective policies preceding both World War I and World War II. According to a slogan of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will."[20] Free trade promotes equal access to domestic resources (human, natural, capital, etc.) for domestic participants and foreign participants alike. Some thinkers[who?] extend that under free trade, citizens of participating countries deserve equal access to resources and social welfare (labor laws, education, etc.). Visa entrance policies tend to discourage free reallocation between many countries, and encourage it with others. High freedom and mobility has been shown to lead to far greater development than aid programs in many cases, for example eastern European countries in the European Union. In other words visa entrance requirements are a form of local protectionism.
Hmmm.... Maybe you should start to not only read wikis but link all the facts together and make your mind about the whole picture afterwards. This actually amazes me about the US in general. Lots of facts being thrown around but not set into context. It's happening in europe aswell ofc, but in the US it's even more evident, especially when I watch the last month or two of the presidential election in the US. And this goes for both sides, the democrats and the republicans alike.
I do base my opinions due to sources other than Wikipedia but for the sake of a fairly succinct summary its a decent source. Its a fairly universal agreement among economist though that free trade is better for global living standards and national for that matter. Its very hard to back up every statement with the full evidence its based upon. Everyone does its. Read through your own original post and there're plenty of examples and the same in mine. The most annoying trend in politics currently though is a purposeful vagueness in everything. I haven't a clue what either Romney or Obama will do in many areas if they were to get a super-majority though that looks very unlikely for either of them.
Yeah. Nothing personal there I assure you. Everyone is entitled to their oppinion. Sure, the majority of economists are for free trade and against protectionism, but you need to know where those economists come from and what interests they try to protect. Theres plenty of economists that tell the exact opposite for example and are heavily against globalisation and much more in favour of regional economies protecting the people in that region. If the american people want to compete with a country like China, where there's a central comittee instead of a democratically elected government, then I wish them good luck in the future competing with the 1.3 billion people there in the centralized system. And again, subsidies are nothing else then protectionism, so if you really want to se free trade, then all these subsidies needed to be cut, leading to the american economy dwindling even more, especially the agriculture, the oil and the automobile industry. Same applies to european countries ofc, just to make sure that thats not only an american problem right there. What the americans need to learn imho is that a more social system like in european countries is something wortwhile to consider, as the majority of people profit of such a system. Especially when it comes to things like medical care and education. And in both those points Obama seems like the better option.
http://www.allvoices.com/contribute...-ethics-charges-for-auto-bailout-profiteering I'll just leave this here.
