The Paul File

Michael is under the impression that if you work for the Government you are incompetent.

It's one of his basic beliefs.

Of course it's not true, but he isn't listening to anything anyone is trying to tell him.

His Transmit light is stuck on and his Receive function has shut off.
 
Michael said:
In the 1960s one person could work and make enough to raise a family of 4.
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They still can, easily. They just can't make enough to have a big house with a pool and four cars in a cool trendy city.

You call that prosperity? You have to be kidding me.
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Your choice. If you don't like it move to Arkansas, get a cheap apartment, work at a fast food restaurant and spend the rest of your time with your kids.

The standard of living is and will continue to decrease in the US.
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I take it you haven't been living in the US for very long, then.
 
billvon said:
In the 1960s one person could work and make enough to raise a family of 4.
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They still can, easily.
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Let's rephrase that. In the 1960s one ordinary, median, 40 hr/week factory job held by a white person supported a wife and two kids in a median purchased home with a standard mortgage, with full appliances and a car, reasonable doctor visits and standard dentistry included. Lower middle class life, at least.

An ordinary entry level job, right out of high school or earlier yet, allowed one to marry and set up house - probably rented, for a few years, while saving a down payment.

This is so far from circumstances now that complaints about the absence of such opportunity are labeled an inflated sense of entitlement, in the public discourse.

michael said:
Which, is exactly the opposite of what the IMF told them to do. They were supposed to open the doors and bring in millions of cheap workers. That's how bass-assed backwards and short-sighted Technocrats think. They're so full of shit they can't see it's THEM that's the problem. Statism IS the problem.
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The technocrats of the IMF, the people that the insular and conservative statists of Japan refused to bow to in your description there, are corporatists - they talk like you, in favor of governments getting out of the way and freeing the international capitalists' invisible hands. That is not "Statism".

billy said:
I don´t know if still true, but ~40 years ago in Paris, you could mail your grocery order early in the AM and get grocers delivered that same eve.
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Forty years ago we had same day delivery of first class mail in the Twin Cities, Minnesota (Saint Paul and Minneapolis), routinely - businessmen would post urgent paperwork in the morning, to be delivered in the early afternoon to offices and homes across town, as a matter of course. And yes, the PO turned a nominal profit - although as a government agency then, it was a bookkeeping entry.
 
We've been living in a series of massive bubbles - bubbles that I think have lent the illusion of our life being much better. The last two that popped would be the technology bubble (where 100s of billions were lost as over priced Excite.com's blew up) and then the Housing Bubble (which had to be even bigger to mask the effects of the Tech bubble burst) and when it blew up we moved on to the Bond Bubble... one could say, the Mother of All Bubbles.

When (not if) that blows up. Then what? We just start selling off States? Maybe China'd like Hawaii?



Who knows? Maybe the Technocrats will do us all a favor and take the whole economic system down - with them in it :)




Is the standard of living getting better in the USA?
Good question. I don't think so. And I can say it's a very different feeling when I'm walking around Japan compared to when I'm walking around an American city of similar size. It simply feels much safer in Japan. Yes, there's more technological advancement - but I'd argue that'd be the case in many systems of government. Fascism produced marvels of advancement. We're pretty much Fascist. I don't want to live in a Fascist State. AND, I think free-market States will beat out fascist ones any day any way. I mean, even NK made a nuke and sells high end technology... to Iran. So what? And at what cost to the public there.
 
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iceaura said:
The technocrats of the IMF, the people that the insular and conservative statists of Japan refused to bow to in your description there, are corporatists - they talk like you, in favor of governments getting out of the way and freeing the international capitalists' invisible hands. That is not "Statism".
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I can see your point of view.

But, I'm not in favor of IMF policy. I'm in favor of individualism and liberty. Governments are there to uphold the Law, example: property rights of the individual. But, this isn't what they are doing. Actually, exactly the opposite. They steal from us by taking our private property. They inflate our money away. They play favorites and pass laws that help their friends. They bail out their buddies on wallstreet.

You keep thinking the government is there to help you.
Why do you think this? Those couple of crumbs tossed on the ground for you to scrounge around for???

The 1% use the government to steal from you. To milk you. They own almost everything. The governments' not "helping" you. They sold you out. Jesus, what do you think a BOND is? When a BOND is sold to a wealthy American or Chinese government - what did they buy?

Well?

Some coked up bureaucrat sells $100 Billion worth of BONDS to the Chinese and gives you "services". Well, what did the Chinese get?

YOU!
Your labor with interest. That income tax you love to pay - it's going to China. With interest. It's going to bail out wallstreet crooks. It's going to bomb civilians in Afghanistan ... civilians who have never heard of "Nine-Eleven". Or 7-11 for that matter.

I can tell you one thing, the Japanese are damn lucky they sold their debt to their own people and not some other country.
 
Here's what your beloved government has given you:

if-us-land-were-divided-like-us-wealth.jpg




Getting it yet???
You pay, they play.
 
Michael said:
Here's what your beloved government has given you:

Getting it yet???
You pay, they play.
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And yet you focus on WEALTH, not income.

Because it creates those distortions.

The real issue to anyone is how is the quality of life they live, and wealth is a changing part of that dynamic.

For most of us it takes a long time to accumulate wealth, but that doesn't mean that one isn't living well while doing so (the key is to not live above your means).

So

My parents have accumulated far more wealth than I have, but I have more income then they do.

For my Children, I have both more wealth and more income.

But eventually this will also change and eventually I will have more wealth than my parents and my children will eventually have more than I do.

But, the key point is that despite the huge differences in Wealth, we ALL live quite well because we have decent incomes (or in my parent's case, not as much income but decent savings coupled with very low expenses).

So we all have our own homes, cars, furniture, food, clothes, computers, phones, internet, toys, pets, vacations etc etc.

So even though there are many magnitudes difference between the wealth of my parents and the wealth of my children, you can't say our lives are much different.

Which is why wealth is a poor metric.

But one you like to use because it suggests things are much more unfair than they really are.

Also, there is no question, that each generation is living better as they enter the 3rd decade of their lives then the previous generation was at the same time in their lives.
 
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iceaura said:
Forty years ago we had same day delivery of first class mail in the Twin Cities, Minnesota (Saint Paul and Minneapolis), routinely - businessmen would post urgent paperwork in the morning, to be delivered in the early afternoon to offices and homes across town, as a matter of course. And yes, the PO turned a nominal profit - although as a government agency then, it was a bookkeeping entry.
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Yeah, it was always better in "the good old days"

NOT

The USPS was in the hole every year of the 70s but one.


By the mid-1960s, the Post Office Department was in deep trouble. Years of financial neglect and fragmented control had finally impaired its ability to function in terms of facilities, equipment, wages, and management efficiency, as well as in terms of the highly subsidized rates that existed on all classes of mail -- rates that for many years bore little relation to costs. In 1966, the Chicago Post Office ground to a virtual stop under a logjam of mail. At a hearing in 1967, Oklahoma Congressman Tom Steed, chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Treasury-Post Office, stated the case for postal reform while questioning Postmaster General Lawrence O'Brien. The Congressman asked: "Would this be a fair summary -- that at the present time, as manager of the Post Office Department, you have no control over your workload; over the rates or revenue; over the pay rates of the employees that you employ; you have very little control over the conditions of the service of these employees; you have virtually no control, by the nature of it, of your physical facilities; and you have only a limited control, at best, over the transportation facilities that you are compelled to use -- all of which adds up to a staggering amount of no control in terms of the duties you have to perform?" What Congressman Steed did not articulate was that this total lack of control by the Postmaster General meant that, in most cases and except for the ZIP Code, the mail was being handled virtually in the same way it had been handled 100 years earlier, despite skyrocketing mail volume.


Postal Reorganization Act
In May 1969, four months after he became a member of President Richard Nixon's Cabinet, Postmaster General Winton M. Blount proposed a basic reorganization of the Post Office Department. The President asked Congress to pass the Postal Service Act of 1963, calling for removal of the Postmaster General from the Cabinet and creation of a self-supporting postal corporation wholly owned by the federal government. On March 12, 1970, after extensive hearings, the House Post Office Committee reported a compromise measure containing postal reform provisions similar to those proposed by the President and providing a pay increase for postal employees, but postal employees called it "too little, too late." Six days later, a postal work stoppage began and ultimately involved approximately 152,000 postal employees in 671 locations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._postal_strike_of_1970
http://www.ceol.com/vvpo/history.html
http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/rates-historical-statistics.htm
 
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Also, there is no question, that each generation is living better as they enter the 3rd decade of their lives then the previous generation was at the same time in their lives.
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Not the people in my neck of the woods.

And even less so if the inherited wealth is stricken from the equation.

They're working more, earning less, eating worse, living with roommates and parents rather than spouse and kids - - - the only thing improved is electron delivery and deployment: the TVs and computers are wonderful.

A duplication of my grandparent's life was beyond the reach of my parents even, and would be a nostalgic dream of another era for any thirty year old now - a signature bank loan for hundreds of acres of prime farmland and woodlot on a small river, complete with large barn, decent house, several outbuildings, tractors and full dairy equipment,

workable by one young man with ambition, good health, and a capable wife?

No freaking way.

Forty years ago we had same day delivery of first class mail in the Twin Cities, Minnesota (Saint Paul and Minneapolis), routinely - businessmen would post urgent paperwork in the morning, to be delivered in the early afternoon to offices and homes across town, as a matter of course. And yes, the PO turned a nominal profit - although as a government agency then, it was a bookkeeping entry.
”
Yeah, it was always better in "the good old days"

NOT

The USPS was in the hole every year of the 70s but one.
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The description there of USPS service in that town was completely accurate. Better service than UPS or Fed Ex now, at a tenth the price.
 
Yeah, cheap farmland can't last forever.

LOL

But, more people own their own house now then any decade before, so your attempt to narrow the definition to just doing the same job as one's grandparents falls flat on it's face.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/US_Homeownership_Overall_2009.png

In the 1920s, it was just 45%, 22% less than now
In the 1950s, it was just 55%, 12% less than now

If your grandparents made buggy whips, you also couldn't continue in the family tradition, but that doesn't mean you aren't better off doing something more MODERN.
 
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adoucette said:
... But, more people own their own house now then any decade before ...
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Technically, yes. their name is on the deed, but about 25% have negative equity in the house, so more accurate to say that the bank or lender is the owner but because of some technical problems (robo signers, illegal* resale into packages with 1000s of owners for each house, etc) the foreclousre rate drastically dropped. I.e. the home owners get to keep their name on the deed as the lender cannot force forclosure in court.

In some New England states, under water owners have go to court to block the foreclosures and won. I.e. They demanded the collection agency produce evidence that it owns the house or that the owner(s) of the house (remember typically more than 1000 for each house sold into a "toxic trash" package) had authorized their collection.

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*"Illegal" as nearly 100% of all counties have proceedure for recording** transfer of ownership (and collect a fee when it transfers by local law) but the banks have ignored this, not paid the fees, and transfered (illegally) via an electronic clearing house in the internet. They know that these problems of their own making allow owners who go to court to stay in their homes, even if not making mortgage payments, and many more are doing so every year.

Recently, the atourney generals of more than half the states came to an agreement with the lenders, trying to resolve these legal dificulties, but AFAIK, their agreement has not cancelled the owner´s rights in court to demand evidence that the collection agency has any right to collect.

It probably will end up in the Supreme Court. I.e. without his consent, can others simply agree that his contracts are not valid - that he must pay with no proof that the collection agency has any right to collect? That is will these New England court ruling be reverse by agreements made years later in which the owner did not particiapate? I think not. The lenders tried to F..k the counties out of their transfer fees but in the end I expect they F..ked themselves out of very much more. If I had a mortgage - I would stop paying it and dare the lender to try to forclose.

** these records are how the county knows to whom to send the property tax bills to.
 
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The very last reporter embedded with the Ron Paul campaign has been ordered home by NBC News, Politico's Dylan Byers reports.
 
Too many people are showing up to his speeches. It's not "safe" for the mainstream media reporters. Over 5,000 in Illinois. I’m sure this is just a figment of my imagination though. Ron Paul really doesn't exist, so we are made to believe.
 
Showing up for a speech maybe,
Too bad that after hearing the speech and seeing him, virtually nobody is voting for him.
 
adoucette said:
Yeah, cheap farmland can't last forever.

LOL
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It wasn't cheap. Ohio was not pioneer country then. It was obtainable, and a person could make a living working it.

adoucette said:
But, more people own their own house now then any decade before,
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Housing equity has been dropping for a long time now. http://www.financialsense.com/contr...ith/the-housing-bubble-broke-the-middle-class As of the middle of 2011, 25 million houses in the US - out of 101 million households - were owned by the people living in them. (Let's just ignore the increasingly significant number of people who own multiple houses).

The 48 million others with mortgages owned, collectively, another 5.5% of the total housing equity in the US. That would be about 5 million houses worth of ownership, accumulated. So let's say the house ownership rate is about 30% now, mostly old people who paid for these houses during former times of prosperity - when one 40 hr@week ordinary job paid for an ordinary house.

That's the lowest rate since 1945, and much of it is actually wealth accumulated before the watershed year of 1980.

adoucette said:
so your attempt to narrow the definition to just doing the same job as one's grandparents falls flat on it's face.
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Not doing the job - having as high a quality of life. Eating as well. Working as well. Housed as well. Living as well.

Are you equating farming with buggy whips? - food is going out of style? Farming is no longer a way of life, or even a career? OK. That's a loss of opportunity and diminution of life.
 
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"... I would have to consider it {serving as VP candidate for Republican party if asked}, but it’s not something I am even thinking about right now because I think our job in Congress is pretty important,” Ryan said. “And what we believe we owe the country is if we don’t like the direction the president is taking us, which we don’t — we owe them a specific sharp contrast and a different path they can select in November and doing this in Congress is really important. That’s why I think I have a real good job right now.” ..."

From: http://news.yahoo.com/paul-ryan-admits-consider-vp-nod-160011383.html
 
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