Just Say Why

Post-Industrial America
by
David Schlecht

In a previous post, I expanded on the value-producing aspect of manufacturing. This discussion explains why America needs a manufacturing industry.

But, what happens when the society becomes so wealthy that they no longer need to or are no longer inclined to continue purchasing? They still have the money and want to do something with it, but how many boats do you buy before you get bored buying boats?

So, along comes the service sector to give the buyers something new to buy. I don’t want another boat, I want someone to mow my lawn so I can enjoy the boat I already have. I want to go out to a nice restaurant, I want to see a play, I just have to go see the latest comedy or magic show…

In this case, the service industry is a symbiotic parasite on the society in that it gives back in return for what it takes. It serves a purpose but it also drains valuable resources from the society.  When you no longer have a manufacturing industry, there is no longer any symbiosis and the parasitic service industry begins to impoverish the society.

This is, of course, all academic, since America is not anywhere near the point where we no longer need anything. America needs plenty. Have you seen the condition of our roads? Or Bridges? Our Internet? Our cell phone infrastructure? We need plenty of manufactured products.

As long as we’re manufacturing what we need and have a little left over to export, then our society remains strong. When we no longer manufacture, then eventually there will be no one left to buy the services from the service industry.

I suppose we’ve all heard the argument that making hamburgers at the local fastfood shop is adding value to the meat so it’s really manufacturing.

This is an awfully weak argument but we can’t dismiss it out of hand. There is some value, but the value is lost the moment the product is consumed. This stems from the old argument of “guns and butter”. Paying for butter is a short-lived investment, but buying guns gives us the value of the weapon for years to come. This was Reagan’s argument for spending money on Star Wars and not Welfare.

The problem here is that the guns, or bombs will eventually be used and will be gone. In a war, it’s amazing just how fast these inventories can disappear, how fast the wealth can disappear.

America needs to get back to building things that last.

Eve of Destruction

Matthew K.

If you’ve spent any time looking back to see what caused the last great depression of the 1930s, you will see that it was the drop in taxes, especially on the wealthy, that triggered the depression. A lack of financial oversight and foolishly low taxes.

We put regulations in place and raised the tax on the wealthy to 90% and we were good for almost a century.

Now, we’ve blown up the regulations and the Republicans have lowered taxes on the rich and guess what.

The lousy part is that even the Democrats in Congress are sniffing glue. It’s not just for Republicans any more. Harry Reid says we need to cut more programs to balance the budget.

Hello Hoover!

It didn’t work back then and it was thinking like this that caused the depression. We need to put a stop to this today. Tomorrow will be too late.

Call your congressmen and the White House (202.456.1111) and tell them you don’t want anything but a clean bill to increase the dept limit. After that, we can take a moment to read our history books and see what caused the depression and what stopped it.

No more slashing government spending until we’re out of this hole.

Call them now. Call them tomorrow and call them every day until they start putting our tax dollars into stimulus programs rather than in the pockets of the rich.

Call today!

What Entitlements
by
Captain Jack

We hear in the press constantly telling us about how bad it is for people to feel entitled to government benefits. Well, that’s not really correct, we’re fed a constant supply of propaganda how entitlements for the poor and middle class are bad but the rich are entitled.

For example, we’re told our whole lives how it’s bad to be on Welfare. It’s bad to be on Unemployment Benefits, it’s bad to be sucking off the system by taking Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid.

Now we’re being told it’s bad to expect the EPA to be protecting our environment or it’s bad for the Labor Relations board to be protecting labor or how it’s bad for the FDA to be protecting us from poisonous drugs or food. We should just stop feeling so entitled.

We shouldn’t feel entitled to a free press, like NPR or PBS so let’s stop funding them and lets shut them down, we shouldn’t have people entitled to get help registering to vote, so let’s shutdown ACORN.

The list goes on endlessly. Every effort we the people put into getting benefits for our tax dollars, the billionaires put more effort into convincing us how we’re not entitled to expect anything for our tax dollars.

But, you never hear the millionaire news casters on the billion dollar news organizations telling us how they’re not entitled to the benefits they get from OUR tax dollars. You never hear the oil industry like the Koch brothers telling us how they’re not entitled to billions of dollars in tax give aways. Remember? Exxon paid noting in American taxes and even got millions of dollars back in a tax refund last year because of the welfare for the wealthy.

You never hear the billion dollar assembly line farm industry saying how they’re not entitled to billions of dollars in farm subsidies. I guess welfare for the rich is okay but we little people shouldn’t be ENTITLED to anything from our tax dollars.

The sad part is that we believe this propaganda. We’re letting them get away with stealing from us.

It’s time we got back to realizing that WE ARE ENTITLED!

We’re entitled to a decent wage. We’re entitled to unionize. We’re entitled to expect to a fair share of the profits from our labors. All our country’s profits are going to the billionaires. Welfare for the billionaires.

We’re entitled to expect our government to represent us and not the multinational corporations. We’re entitled to expect the rich to pay their fair share.

We’re entitled to expect to get some retirement money back from the Social Security we’ve been paying into our whole lives. We’re entitled to unemployment check when we’re unemployed after paying into it our whole lives. No more welfare for the wealthy.

We are entitled.

The Party of Fiscal Responsibility
Dave Speck

We’ve all heard the millions of dollars worth of lie-mercials on the TV, all about how the Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility and it’s the liberals that want to tax and spend.

Let’s pretend that we’re really stupid enough to believe that. Wouldn’t we start to question it after seeing the Republicans rake up nine trillion dollars of the 13 trillion dollars in national debt in the past 30 years?

Okay, let’s pretend we’re so stupid that we still believe the lies. Well, the new Congress has just lied their pledge to uphold the constitution and the Republicans are already burying us in dept even further. They’re stocking up their congressional offices with industry lobbyists. They have taken the “Pay-go” policy that balanced the budget when Clinton was in office and completely ignored it during the Bush years. Now they have changed it to “cut-go”. In other words, we can cut taxes on the billionaires and add trillions of more debt to the American people but we have to cut services for the little people if we add any new services to the little people.

Why is anyone so stupid that they still believe this garbage? The party of lies and garbage.