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"America is being transformed from an industrial colossus to a tired, down-at-the-heels, post-industrial society."
Americans have been so busy worrying rying about all their problems that very few noticed that the U.S. is going bankrupt. Ironically, it is those very problems that are driving the nation into bankruptcy. A partial list would include crime, drugs, poverty, a failing education system, a crumbling infrastructure, soaring health care costs, lagging productivity, a huge national debt, a large trade deficit, and an anemic rate of economic growth.
Can't America just muddle through, the way it always has? Not this time. the problems are so overwhelming that there are no easy solutions. Just take a look around.
All over the country, people are wearing signs that have not been seen since the Great Depression: "Will work for food." In Santa Fe, N.M., where several hundred homeless individuals have staked out places to sleep, there is a sign under a bridge proclaiming, "This is a home." In downtown Seattle, Wash., it is possible to see people with placards that say, "No Job, No Food, No Hope." They don't even bother to add, "No Home." Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro remembers a little girl she saw near a shut-down Pennsylvania steel mill, holding up a sign: "My daddy needs a job."
America is being transformed from an industrial colossus to a tired, down-at-the-heels, post-industrial society. It is becoming a nation of the rich and super-rich at the top, a mass of poor people on the bottom, and a powerless middle class squeezed in between.
More and more, the U.S. is taking on the trappings of Third-World poverty. The streets are filled with homeless people and beggars. Crime is rampant, and the drug epidemic continues to rage out of control. The contrast between poverty and affluence never has been sharper, except that now there seems to be a lot more poor people than ever before.
Quoted: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2586_v122/ai_14995070/
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Although I know this wont be popular, I say tax all income as we now do the first $120,000. I believe that one act along with the matching funds would solve most of our countries finanical woes, and when the debt is erased, go back to like it is now. This would effect social security the most, but you take the money and pay off the debt.
All this is mumbo jumbo BS!! First of all, we went bankrupt in the early 1900's. The real solution that MP doesn't want to even consider because it work, is eliminating the Federal Reserve and having a plan to go back to US Dollars, not Federal Reserve Notes. Now, this would take an organized plan but, IS pheasible and necessary. Then the FED and the families behind it could not manipulate our economy or the markets!!! For more on the FED read "The Creature From Jekyl Island". We must also eliminate Socialist programs that Michael Pinson and his boy Marco Rubio support, like SocialIST Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. We can phase these out in a way that causes little hurt to those who are dependent on them yet, supports our Constitution and is ANTI Socialist!!!!!
The primary initial cause of downturn in the economy is several different issues which all helped cause the problem, although initially due primarily to a home price bubble problem. From least significant to most significant, first is that some activists groups such as acorn have pressured banks through sit-ins and other protests to give more loans to “lower-income” areas such as ghettos and urban downtown areas. Secondly federal officials at the Federal Housing Administration and Housing and Urban Development pressured banks to give loans to minorities lessening the credit score requirements or be accused of discrimination and have their license revoked (over half of all loans given to Black Americans last year were FHA loans, double the rate of White Americans). Lastly FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, by underwriting over 70% of all housing loans (and thereby making it easier to get loans in general even if you have poor credit) caused an increase in the number of people getting loans and thereby the price of houses above what the market could support. Once people started to realize the problem, the market properly corrected itself, and the housing prices fell. This caused many people to go “under-water” with their mortgage owing more then the house was worth (and therefor unable to sell the house to get out of the mortgage), which caused a vast increase in defaults and foreclosures. These defaults and foreclosures hurt any of the banks that were holding the loans (although FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were underwriters in many of these loans and as such got hurt the most, these banks holding the loans also lost a lot). This caused many investment banks and even many normal banks to fail, and tightening of the credit markets, overall vastly harming the economy.
Once the economy was harmed, it would normally recover in a year or two, however the political situation has thrown gas on the fire and made a bad situation even worse, slowing the economy and preventing it from recovering properly. The stimulus bill in particular pulled more money out of the hands of the workers to give to politically influential groups. This is in addition to all the federal spending programs and other federal spending causing a massive increase in debt. This makes businesses and investors less confident in the long term ability of the government to pay back what it owes, and as such less willing to invest in long term investments in the US.
Normally with a dropping housing prices of that much, causes deflation (the amount money is worth going up), however the fed has instigated “qualitative easing” (effectively just printing lots of money) in an effort to stop this, instead this has slowed the regrowth of the economy by making it harder to get out of the bad housing situation people are already in (normally making money worth more means they are making more and the lower housing prices wouldn’t be as big of a problem). Had the fed just stayed out of the problem and allowed the market to work, things would have corrected themselves much faster.
Overall, the economy will recover from the bad governmental policies, but it will take time. The recent push of republicans to actually start to try and manage the debt will help with this recovery (even the appearance of doing something will cause people to start to invest again).