"John R. Carroll" wrote in
m:

"D Murphy" wrote in message
...
"John R. Carroll" wrote in
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"D Murphy" wrote in message
...
jim rozen wrote in
:

In article , Gunner
says...

So because the price of oil has been raised by those willing to
bid it up..its the fault of Bush?

So, folks had to wait in line to buy gas, on even/odd days?

Was that Carter's fault?

Electorate said, "yep."


People have short memories. Oil was higher under Carter than it is
today. In todays (2005) dollars oil was 86 dollars per barrel in
1980. In the
70's
oil rose the equivelant of 71 (2005) dollars per barrel. Not even
close to the piddly couple of bucks that oil has gone up recently.

People spend less of their income on energy today than they did
then as well. Even with the recent increases taken into account.

GWB won't be running for re-election anyhow.

Dan,
I would like you to consider this, It's worth a moment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/op...26krugman.html
snip the op ed piece

Far more interesting IMO is the national poll and studies the New
York Times did earlier this year. It covers everything that was in
that editorial and so much more. Start he

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/class/index.html?
excamp=GGGNaverageincome

Mouse over the box on top of the page an click on the "American
Attitudes" one. This nationwide poll doesn't really support the
editorial position.

People that work in manufacturing are probably a little more prone to
feeling left behind. Because they are.

After WWII all of the major industrialized nations were left in ruins
except for the U.S. We enjoyed a couple of decades of being the
worlds largest supplier of just about everything with almost no
competition. As the other mnations rebuilt they needed us less and
less, and eventually reached a point in the 1970's where they could
hold their own competing with us. Since then, third world countries
have become a factor as they have abundant, cheap labor.

Look at this:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/national/20050515
_CLASS_GRAPHIC/index_02.html

Pick "production" from the pull down menu and you can see that there
is
not
a lot of money to be made working in a factory. If you compare that
to "installation, maintenance and repair" you can see that you're
probably better off installing CNC machines than you are running
them.

A person can make more money programming computers than they can
programming CNC's. The skill set required is about the same.

In any case education is the best path to higher income. One of the
great things about living here is that you can go to school at night,
no matter your age.



Good links Dan, and I have seen that material but thanks. I am going
to save them.
I thought Krugman's piece was more of a spot check than a real
analysis. The polling data he uses is very current and the real in
depth studies you pointed out were comprehensive and therefore
somewhat dated. They would have to be by their very nature.

The poll portion of the work was conducted in March so it's not all that
old. But I'll concede that if you were living on the edge finacially, the
rise in fuel prices since then would would be a tough pill to swallow and
would certainly taint your outlook. But overall the majority of the
respondents were optimistic.


Krugman's stuff is what I call pulse taking. The big studies are
autopsies. As such they tend to be good reference works but I prefer
my patient's alive. This introduces a measure of the erratic and
unreliable but that's OK by me. I enjoy reading tea leaves and am
ignored in any event. Nobody dies and few listen.

I watched an interview last week with one of Cross's new hires ( 6
months I think) and it was interesting.

snip


Then they interviewed the project manager at Cross. He talked about
the investment the company was making to get this system lashed
together and working properly and the benefit to stock holders. More
blah blah and blah. I am sure you have heard this before as well. He's
right as far as I know. I noticed that he was pretty steely eyed and
his whole posture was pretty aggressive.

His answer to the last question - "Are you concerned that having made
this investment these new people will move on once the settle in" -
caused my jaw to drop, literally drop, and then I laughed off and on
for the rest of the evening. He was absolutely spot on but I couldn't
believe he was stupid enough to say what he did on national
television. His entire answer was that he wasn't concerned in the
least - "where are they going to go" he said " the nearest place of
employment of any type is over 250 miles away". The smug, self
satisfied look on his face said a lot.

My experience has been that people that are that confident in their plan
are doomed to have their asses handed to them. The guy sitting in podunk
will have plenty of time to plan his escape and revenge.


I don't know how alike or different you and I are Dan but when we
discuss the well being and health of our country we are talking about
two entirely different things from very different perspectives.
You argue, intelligently as a rule, that all is well and while the
economy could be better it's doing pretty good. Dislocation is both
normal and inevitable. The current positive trends will continue and
over the long haul we'll do just fine. Politics is politics and don't
really make much of a difference as politicians are all alike
regardless of party affiliation. If that isn't about right please
correct me.

That's about right. Certainly the government and politicians can affect
the economy, particularly on a local level.


This is a sliver of my thinking.
None of what you point out as important or revealing telltales matter
much in the long run. They are all symptoms if you will.
The economy of the United States is successful and has been
competitive because of the financial, legal, transportation, energy
and commercial underpinnings from which it flows. It is also not
successful due to some special and uniquely American quality commonly
known as the "can do spirit" of Americans. There is plenty of "can do
spirit" all over the world. What we have in this country is a system,
let me repeat that - it's important - WE HAVE A SYSTEM, that turns
"can do" into "been there done that". That's the huge difference.

I agree with that. In addition to the "underpinnings" you can't
underestimate the importance of the massive amount of capital and assets
that this country posesses.


You are looking at symptoms and ignoring the underlying condition. An
analogy that you will be able to relate to is making a sale to an
unqualified customer. I do not necessarily mean financially
unqualified although there are those as well. I mean the one sale in
50 ( or less really) that you make by bulldogging a sale to a guy that
isn't really a customer. It's an old school sales philosophy that I am
positive you have seen close up. You may even employ it yourself.
These types of deals are the crack cocaine of sales in any industry.
They keep you tied up chasing marginal deals because of the rare sale
that closes. You are always chasing that high. You also forgo 5
qualified deals that you didn't have the time to follow up on because
you won't let any prospect go. Know what I mean? It's not a personal
slam by any means. Don't take it as such - I don't know either you or
your work and absent such knowledge wouldn't draw any inferences at
all. I am trying to make a point.

The United States of America has been on a 30 year quest to close
every single unqualified customer we can find. In the process we have,
and continue too, neglect the underlying fundaments that really did
make things go. I can provide you with any number of instances where
this is the case. Really, name a number if you can't think of a
million or so examples on your own.

Let's take gun control legislation just for the hell of it.

Start with the premise that some rules are necessary and good. I do
not know a single person that would argue that the truly insane should
be able to own or even possess firearms. These unfortunates are a
danger to themselves and society even without a gun.

OK, now let's see what we have done legislatively.

What we have now is the looniest collection of municipal, city, state
and federal laws and regulation imaginable.Thousands of statutes,
fully 80 percent of which are either not enforced or are practically
unenforceable for one reason or another. All of this and the number of
laws is only increasing. This especially happens when one or two nut
cases misbehaves and kills people. Suddenly we have more laws.
Since we agreed that rules are necessary, what should we do? How about
this. Have a group sit down and write a statute. There will be _fill
in the blank with a SMALL number_ of articles and conditions and these
will be clear and concise. When it's finished the states vote it up or
down. Eventually something will pass. When it does, throw out every
single frigging gun law in the country and REALLY ENFORCE the new set.
This, or something like it, needs to be accomplished across the board
with both civil and criminal statutes. I would start with the civil
stuff because the situation is desperate and the survival of this
country in the long run depends to a much larger extent on a good
clean and understandable civil code that can be STRICTLY adhered to
and EVENLY applied.

Rinse and repeat for the tax code, infrastructure legislation/planning
apparatus and so on.

The huge problem here is a culture of special interests and an us against
them attitude. Top that off with a populace of deeply conservative people
who are adverse to wholesale change, and complex unfair legislation is
what you get.

If you don't believe that "liberal" Americans are at heart deeply
conservative, talk to them about reforming the tax code, Social Security,
etc..

We also need to resurrect the classless citizen model. In the eyes of
the law all citizens need equality, justice must be blind. The USA
Patriot act has created two classes of American citizens. We now have
the class with constitutionally protected rights as well as a class
whose rights can be pretty capriciously ignored at the convenience or
whim of the Federal government. Not only did I not think I would live
to see such a thing, I didn't think any American would. These are the
freedoms Americans have fought and died for since before there was an
America. Some of them were friends of mine.
Some were probably your friends, neighbors or family members as well.
I can hardly believe it Dan but I am glad my father, a man who fought
in two wars for this country, died before he could see this. I mourned
his passing and I miss him so saying that means a great deal but it is
no less true for that.

Unfortunately as much as people like to think that we have a long
tradition of respecting civil rights, that simply is not the case. John
Adams, Lincoln, FDR and many others have trampled on civil rights in far
worse ways than the Patriot Act does. We do have a tradition of restoring
those rights soon after the crisis at hand is over. I'm confident the
Patriot Act won't be permanent.


--

Dan