US Economy on the verge of collapse?

[Scotttu]

Dr Doom is a financial advisor with a 100% accuracy. His prediction based on the numbers is that by late fall the stock market is going to crash.
A second economist has come out and said the same thing.

I'm no fan of taxes but taxes must be raised, spending must be curbed.

There are those that believe the current administration wants the economy to collapse so that capitalism can be removed and replaced by social justice.

I don't have the answers but the war is not sustainable (75 billion per year), sending aid in the form of 30 million to 30 billion is not sustainable.

Salaries go up over time, costs go up.
Now that there are fewer salaries and they ARE in fact going down, goods must also - otherwise if inflation hits your $9/hr job cannot afford anything.
Riots will follow, Egypt is a prime example.

The fed has also used almost every tool in it's arsenal and nothing has worked.
Because the USA has the 2nd highest business tax, companies moved to countries that do not, ie China. China's labor is far cheaper.
Vicious circle, anyone left in the USA is just doing service oriented jobs, not manufacturing.

So in my opinion what has to happen is you have to either:
a) Lower the tax rate below most countries tax rates so that businesses will want to return.
b) Put a tariff on all goods brought to the US based from US companies, but this will be passed onto the consumer.

[GreenAce92]

What about Option C:

Anti-gravity drive that only the US country produces?

It would be a Henry Ford all over again.

I know not a serious response but I had been pondering about a "what if" scenario where the US once again makes something that the rest of the world does not.

Seriously though, some sort of AG drive, floating signs, float houses, floating carriers, floating tables etc... another extensive application of technology ( stringing together words )

[WildWill]

What about Option C:

Anti-gravity drive that only the US country produces?

It would be a Henry Ford all over again.

I know not a serious response but I had been pondering about a "what if" scenario where the US once again makes something that the rest of the world does not.

Seriously though, some sort of AG drive, floating signs, float houses, floating carriers, floating tables etc... another extensive application of technology ( stringing together words )

Now just weaponize all of those things and it'd be the good ole US of A!

Sorry, but we just seem to be driven to police the world and nothings better then a floating house except for a floating house with gun turrets.

[GreenAce92]

I know it sucks but like I asked about why we even bother with Terrorism. Why not just seal the US we can sustain ourselves after all right? So lock our gates, F the rest of the world who hate us and let them deal with their own problems? They don't like our women being skanks well tell them to be more manly and grow a pair so they want to see their women not cover them up in silk cloths.

I do that with my fiberglassed airplanes.

Anyway, if people didn't hate us so much then we wouldn't need to police the world. However if we do police the world and try to enforce our ways ( The R word ) then we must be dicks. Q.E.D.

[WildWill]

I know it sucks but like I asked about why we even bother with Terrorism. Why not just seal the US we can sustain ourselves after all right? So lock our gates, F the rest of the world who hate us and let them deal with their own problems? They don't like our women being skanks well tell them to be more manly and grow a pair so they want to see their women not cover them up in silk cloths.

I do that with my fiberglassed airplanes.

Anyway, if people didn't hate us so much then we wouldn't need to police the world. However if we do police the world and try to enforce our ways ( The R word ) then we must be dicks. Q.E.D.

Hahaha, We can support ourselves......uh, no..we can't. We sent 99% of all of our manufacturing base overseas a long time ago. It would take forever to rebuild that. On top of that, who is going to work in all those factories for Chinese wages? And another thing, the other countries that hate us...it's not because of our skank girls, or the fact that most of us are over weight, and any other silly reasons. They hate us because we won't leave them alone. We have been playing Peter against Paul over there in the middle east for over 50 years. We pit these guys against those guys and then a few years later we swap. Through destabilization we get cheap fuel, and without that cheap fuel we'd be in a world of trouble.

[Vitamin J]

Haha yep Will. Our foreign policy is basically "yeah he's a son of a bitch, but he's OUR son of a bitch!". The Arab Spring is like a Who's Who of US supported dictators.

[Wearyman]

Scottu,

I think you are on the right track. Although I would take issue with you on raising taxes. Americans are already taxed far too much already. Not that other people in other countries aren't taxed more, but that doesn't mean we should emulate that. The biggest problem is that we are spending more than we take in. We simply need to cut our spending. We cannot afford gigantic entitlements like ACA (Obamacare) Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security (has been insolvent for decades, propped up by the general fund), and other welfare spending.

Frankly, we need an across the board cut to ALL social spending programs, with further plans to "devolve" most of them down to the state level. These are things that need to be moved out of the federal scope as they aren't Constitutional and our federal government should not be doing them. Should we do SOME social spending? Yeah, maybe. For those that truly need it such as the mentally and physically disabled and veterans. But that is a MINISCULE fraction of the money we spend now. The federal government generally does social programs badly anyway, with massive amounts of waste. Better to let them be administered at a state or local level where the people can have more oversight.

Once that's done we can look into other cuts such as administrative, military and discretionary spending cuts. These are also way too fat and could stand a good trimming. (I can think of several agencies we could do away with altogether and save BILLIONS.)

Ultimately, our problem is NOT an income problem. It is (and has been for a long time) a SPENDING problem. Get the profligate spending under control, and not only will the economy rebound, but it will stay healthier longer, with less waste and corruption. We will still (of course) have the natural ups and downs that any economy has. But without the heavy hand of a bloated Federal government attempting to control the path of the economy, downs will be shorter, and ups will be longer, with the balance of the economy generally on the "up" side of the sine wave. Yes, things won't be as "fair". Some will be rich, and some will be poor, and people will rise and fall based on many different factors, not all of them their own fault. But frankly, I would rather take that risk to have Freedom and Capitalism and an unequal portion of their blessings, than have Socialism or Communism and an equal portion of their misery.

[Vitamin J]

It's funny how you think of our social spending as "massive" but it takes you several paragraphs to even mention our military spending....which is truly massive.

[GreenAce92]

I have to be the good guy here

The technology that they develop is really impressive though I mean, the Apache alone has this targeting eye-scope that guides missiles by his eyes! Incredible.

[Vitamin J]

Lemme put it into perspective for you. NASA's annual budget is less than we spend on A/C in Afghanistan and Iraq.