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.

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!

So we hear the republican chanting over and over how the sky is falling if we don’t balance the budget, even if it means we have to take food out of the mouths of our elderly and sick and weak and poor. The world will end. Why all the noise?

The Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling 18 times during Reagan’s administration. Got that? 18 times. During that time Reagan increased our nation’s deficit by three trillion dollars, more than all the previous presidents combined.

Where did all that money go? It went to tax breaks for the rich, mostly. That and to the military budget and his failed Star Wars program.

Then, along came Clinton and he balanced the budget and had a surplus that would have paid off the deficit in 10 years.

Where did all this money come from? Clinton ended “Welfare as we know it.” In other words, he stole it from the poor. He also raised taxes on the wealthy a couple percentage points.

Then, Bush added almost five trillion dollars to the deficit and the republican voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling.

Where did all that money go? Tax breaks for the rich and two illegal wars.

Then the economy crashed, as it always does when you lower taxes on the rich, and Bush pushed through another trillion dollars to the banker crooks.

Now, Obama wants to add a small fraction to the debt, less than 8%, and the Republicans are threatening to bring the entire country down unless we take more money from the poor.

Do you see any sort of pattern here? The republicans ran up almost all of the 10 trillion dollar debt and they don’t want to pay for it. They want the poor and the weak and the elderly and the sick to pay for their big party.

The republicans and the rich have been living large for the past 30 years at our expense and now they want you and me to pay for the bill.

What would you say about a political party that does this? What would you say about a party that is willing to crash our economy if they don’t get their way on everything? We’re in this mess because of the tax breaks to the rich and the republicans are saying they will destroy the country if we don’t give more tax breaks to the rich.

What party does big business own?

America’s middle class has been doing with less and less over the past 30 years while the rich have been getting richer and richer. There has been a class war going on for 30 years folks, and it’s time we started waking up to the reality. Not only are the rich making more than they ever did before, but they already own most all the wealth in the entire country.

It’s time to wake up, America. There’s a class war going on and you’re getting killed.

Listen to Senator Bernie Sanders.

We’ve been hearing a lot of commotion lately by the Republicans about how we need a balanced budget.

At first blush, this might sound like a great idea. After all, don’t you and I have to balance our checkbook at the end of each month?

No, actually, we don’t. We can go out and borrow any time we feel like it.  In fact, if our federal government becomes hamstrung with a limitation like this, it would be the best thing for the billionaires and the worst thing for you and me. That’s why the Tea Baggers are all over this. Their billionaire leaders (behind the scenes) are telling them how important it is that the government can’t borrow money.

But, let’s look at what would have happened if our founding fathers were as stupid as a Tea Bagger. Without being able to spend more money than they had, we would never have been able to protect ourselves from attack as a young nation. In fact, we wouldn’t even be able to protect ourselves from Hitler during the second world war if we hadn’t been able to borrow money.

Imagine what we would have done during the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s. Without being able to borrow money to get our people back to work, this great country of the USA would have gone broke. We wouldn’t have been able to start up all the jobs programs that saved us from republican stupidity.

Here we are, a century later and the Republicans are trying to destroy our country again. When will America ever learn not to listen to the Republicans?

Here is a graph of Nevada’s Revenue stream. Check it out. While looking at it, remember that Nevada comes in dead last in almost every area that matters, from health to intelligence to poverty.

Take a look at the slice of the pie that is the largest – sales tax. Sales tax is one of the most regressive types of tax because it affects the poor and middle class the most.

So, in Nevada, we see an example of what it’s like when the rich are not expected to pay their fair share. Do you see any income tax on the wealthy? Any taxes on billion dollar bankers? Any taxes on billion dollar mines? No? Me neither.

So the rich get a free ride and the poor and middle class are saddled with everything.

Well, Nevada, how is that working for you? Does it attract business having no income tax? No, I guess not.

When will you ever learn, Nevada?

But the bigger question is what on earth are we doing trying to bring the rest of the country down to Nevada’s level by following their tax structure and giving the billionaires a free ride while expecting the poor and middle class to work for less and carry a greater portion of the cost?

When will America ever learn? It’s time to throw out the failed Republican policies. We’ve been here before, America, it was called the Great Depression and it didn’t work so well back then.

Tell everyone you know to sign up and get educated about what is going on and how to help save America.

Check out the Fight Back Teach-In.

Imagine for a moment, or maybe you don’t even need to imagine, that your employer decided that even though the business was doing good, it was time to cut your wages and improve profits. No better time to take advantage of the times than right now, when people are worried about their jobs.

So your wages have been cut and you can no longer afford to enjoy the lifestyle you’ve grown accustomed to. What do you do?

If you’re a typical American, you’ll look for better work. No one needs to put up with unethical employers. That’s right, you look to bring in more money. When would anyone say, “oh darned, I better sell my house and start living out of a cardboard box?”

No one would, except the mentally challenged.

So, when our country is dealing with insufficient funds, do we just say, “okay, it’s time to move into that third-world-country?” No! Only the mentally challenged would consider that as the first option.

So, why do we Americans ever listen to the Republican party saying that we have to start expecting less? We’ve been doing with less for over 30 years now and it’s time we started demanding more.

What happens to America if the fools get away with convincing us that we need to expect less from our country? America becomes less of a country. It’s the same thing that happens if you choose the cardboard home rather than a better job.

We can’t afford to listen to the Republican failed misconceptions any longer. If we want America to remain strong, if we want to remain a first-world country, we have to act today and say we don’t want the cardboard box.

Will we ever get back to prosperity if we keep expecting less?

Do you want to live in the best country in the world or the cheapest?

We’ve discussed supply side economics many times on this blog and there are countless websites that compare the two economic models, Keynes vs Friedman. But this time I’m going to add a bit of history to the discussion. After all, if we can’t learn from our mistakes, we’re doomed to repeat them, and repeating them we are.

Supply Side Economics

Probably the best way to describe Supply Side Economics is Voodoo economics. This is the idea that if you give money to the rich, they will hire people and pay a good wage and the heavens will open and the angles will sing and leprechauns will dance. It’s also referred to as trickle-down economics.

In other words, people will run out and buy just because the stores are full.

Keynesian Economics

This is the old model of economics where demand drives the economy. In other words, when people have money they will buy.

Now this is obviously just broad strokes and there is a whole lot more involved in each of these models of economics. You may find yourself interested enough to learn economics and get into the nuts and bolts of these, but this is as technical as I plan to get.

Alright, so here’s the little bit of history I promised you. Neither of these perspectives of economics is new. Since the beginning of economic times, the concept of supply and demand has been the fundamental core of the study of economics.

However, back in the early days of America, the concept of unfettered free trade was the approach the government took and this freed up the companies to be as greedy and they could. This allowed America to become quite wealthy, or at least our wealthy became wealthy.

Of all the leading countries, we were becoming the most wealthy. This seemed to convince many people that if a little free is good, oh my gosh, totally free trade must be the be-all end-all of wealthy. So, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, America decided to pull all the plugs and let the rich get as rich as they wanted.

So by the 1920s we saw the roaring 20s when the wealthy were insane with their greed and wealth. At lease back then, they were smart enough to protect our industries through tariffs.

Then, the big crash.

Following the Great Depression, many economist admitted that the whole idea of completely unregulated greed was bad for America. At this time, Keynes came back to the idea that maybe really, demand drives the economy. This wasn’t the first time economics thought of this, but it was back in vogue.

Then, about 50 years ago, Friedman brought back the greed and supply side economics.

So, fast-forward to today and we’re all the rage back into supply-side economics and unfettered free trade. Of course, we’re also seeing the return of the economics of the Great Depression.

When will we learn from history? When we start exposing the idiots who keep pushing failed economic policies on us. When we eject the same people who got us in the First Republican Great Depression. The Republicans.

Unfettered Free Trade doesn’t work. All it does is impoverish a nation and make a handful of greedy people insanely rich.

Free trade doesn’t work.

Supply Side Economics don’t work. It’s a myth.

Voodoo Economics always brings disaster. Read your history.

Why is the billion dollar corporate media downplaying the 100,000 person rally going on in Wisconsin? You would think they have a personal interest in keeping the middle class uninvolved. Maybe they’re afraid we’ll start demanding that they pay their fair share.

If this was a rally of Tea Baggers, there wouldn’t be any room in their programming to cover Japan but since it’s only the middle class…

Here is what it looks like from CNN’s coverage:

Wisconsin Rally according to CNN

And this is what it actually looked like:

The actual size of the march on Madison

Amazing!