| Re: As we slide down the scale ..... PR&C |
Subject: Re: As we slide down the scale ..... PR&C by bogus on 2010/12/5 19:21:24 I think we need to fall before we can recover. We genpop need to be bitch slapped out of complacency. I am concerned, tho, that if the wrong ppl do the bitch slapping, it will not work. I was reading about post-war Germany recently. Their industrial base was literally wiped from the face of the earth by the 8th Air Force. I mean GONE. Nada. Yet they fought, they tested, they sucked it up and got it going. It started small, in the case of the article, it started via manufacturing. The country was trying to get it's footing again, and it was ready to scale up its agribusiness. So they needed tractors. Well, Porsche had a design from Pre-war, but one of the laws of the government was that unless you were actively manufacturing in that field, you couldn't move into it. The idea was simple enough, for now, lets get the old firms back and moving again, we will worry about diversification later. At the same time, Porshce was able to license the tractor to a firm in Austria and one in Germany. Within 5 years (1955), they were bought out by Mann. And by 1965, the entire project was about done. A third firm took over for a few years, but the reality was that German agribusiness didn't need this any longer. We can learn lessons from the Germany economic miracle. We are just too damned stupid to do so. Our manufacturing has died to the point where it is non-existance. It might has well been blown to bits, so, we help it back up. If the US is to succeed, we MUST have manufacturing. Transferring to a service economy is just not practical in the long run. We will create a population of air headed retail clerks and there will be no innovation... Our future will depend on our ability to consume crap made elsewhere. And that bothers me. Our economic future would depend ENTIRELY on the whims of some foreign nation. If they decided to raise prices, they could. And then we are powerless to do anything about it, because we have created a generation of lemmings who are too goddamned weak to say "NO!" If you need a parallel, check out what happened in the summer of 2008... Sure, the housing market was quaky... the jobs market was iffy... but what pushed us over the edge? Foreign oil markets. People started to play with the markets and, combined with currency exchange rates, we got fucked. Royally and completely. Did you know that while oil was quadrupling here in the states in price, in europe it barely doubled? That's how weak the dollar had become. Folks with their giant SUVs, with their giant mortgages, with their giant SUV payments, credit card debt out the ass, were pushed to the brink of total financial annialiation because of this price hike in gas. I remember vividly, paying $85.00 to fill the tank in my Vette!!!! $4.849 per gallon for 91. Scale that up to an SUV with a 35 gallon tank... can you say "tipping point?" Well, we tipped... and we are still paying for it. And will be for years to come. And all the while, we have politicians back in DC collectively playing the fiddle. More concerned with posturing for their party faithful than by trying to fix this. Did any of you see the headline, and associated photo on yahoo news recently? It was where the GOP was going to block all bills until they got their way on renewing the Bush tax cut. WTF? First off, the gents in the pic just pissed me off, looked like a couple of old school pompass white fat cats from DC. That's where the first bitch slap needs to occur... but don't they get it? These damned tax cuts, are great, but damnit, can't they see that unless they cut spending it don't do nothing. ok... I am done for now. |
