The Crash Course

[LowGear]

You folks are aware that this guy is selling gold?

If we are going into hyper inflation then the only thing to do is mortgage the whole tamale and wait to pay back the loans with pretend money.  In fact mortgage it all and buy gold - - - - from Chris.  Praise the Lord we have Chris.

He lost me on chapter five.  Surplus has many avenues rather than just growth or prosperity.  What self serving snake oil blarney.

Casey

[SHIPCHIEF]

LOWGEAR;
Be fair, Surplus + Growth Or Prosperity is a concept to make a point. You could spend it (surplus)  all on military hardware that never gets used or wellfare that maintains a block of worthless voters or something. It was an example to make a point.

[clytle374]

You folks are aware that this guy is selling gold?

If we are going into hyper inflation then the only thing to do is mortgage the whole tamale and wait to pay back the loans with pretend money.  In fact mortgage it all and buy gold - - - - from Chris.  Praise the Lord we have Chris.

He lost me on chapter five.  Surplus has many avenues rather than just growth or prosperity.  What self serving snake oil blarney.

Casey

Since I couldn't find it I registered on his website and followed the link under take action=>buy gold and got an article about buying gold.   In this article it links 4 websites that sell gold, none of them look to be connected with him.  Where did you find that he owns even one of these sites?

Growth is all money invested on the future, everything else is prosperity. What you buy, use or save. 

[Doug]

I just read Rifkin's end of work and some of the cocepts in that seem to aply to what I see around me today

I have seen this video and also see some concepts supported that I already believed such as unlimited growth and over population and resource depletion.

I have seen the resource depeltion end of things firts hand and its real with respect to copper and other base metals. Copper actualy peaked inthe early 70s you know but we switched to fiber optic cable and aluminum for other aplications.

My point is there is the possibility as he says that we can get around probelms with technology but that population curve is the real threat and over exploitation of resources.

I don't trust the goverment anymore they are self serving and realy want to preserve the status quo. What I realy want to hear is from a summit of leading ecconomists and buisness leaders how we will move forward from here.  

[LowGear]

Yes my brothers.  The government is the boggy-man and marketeers are the salvation of modern man.  Chris is just a wonderful guy out educating the masses because God wants him too and if Chris is good he will be rewarded in the end.  Give me a break.
 
Please don’t tell me you only have one email address.  One corporation.  One Trust.  One business name.  Where did you find those links to gold sales?  Does Chris get 50 cents per link hit?  $1.00?  Two bits?  When clean drinking water is down to a gallon a day per person you may find out what anything is worth that doesn’t directly sustain life.  A chunk of lead may have far more value than ten pounds of gold or green colored paper.
I’m sorry but I didn’t hear any explanations of the trilogy.  Surplus = Growth or Prosperity?  Growth = Surplus or Prosperity?  Prosperity = Growth - Surplu?.  Great salesman let you fill in the blanks should you not have your head too deep in the trough that you might think.

Low Gear

I mean Casey

[dieselman]

Back in the early 80's there was similar "talk" about social security, welfare, etc.

And that life as we know it would change forever by the year 2000.

Well, it didn't happen. 

Now I watch, listen, but mostly ignore predictions of the future.

Last year oil was over $140 a barrell, on its way to $200,  with no end in sight. HMMM.

I am protecting my future with what I can control.

Jim

[SHIPCHIEF]

You can put your head in the sand if you like.
Things are different this time. Never before has the US had so much debt at every level from consumers, city, county, state, and federal gov't.
The baby boomer retirement era is upon us.
The federal govenment wants to expand every program they can, National Health Care is being debated now. No other country has done it successfully, so it just means rationing for the elderly, which I suppose most of you are. Sucks to be you. Paid in all your life too. Jim, Social Security is now running a net loss that has to be made up from the General Fund. The alarmists weren't too far off on the date, they just didn't describe how it will play out. Broke just means outgo is equal to or greater than income. When they truely can't find money to pay out, they will tell everyone the Consumer Price Index shows very low inflation, so no cost of living increases. Then they will raise the retirement age some more, and start denying benefits to certain classes fo people, as well as raising the vesting period beyond 10 years. They can't stop the program eniterly, becuase they can't give up the income source. The status quo must continue!
More power to be given to the Federal Reserve; they are part of our current problem. As Doug said, government has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Stronger measures must be put in place to maintain control of the longest free lunch in world history.
More people in the world are entering some sort of middle class and want what we have. Peak oil is here. Actually the US experienced peak oil in 1970, so we buy more each year. More debt. More pressure on limited resources.
When Jimma Carter was prez, I was young and buying my first home. $370 per month for a little 700 sq. ft. house. As inflation increased, so did my pay. Even tho my pay was loosing ground to inflation due to Jimma's new way of figuring the Consumer Price Index, it was like my house payment was going down. A previous post here mentioned that as a strategy to come out of the other side rich. It would have worked then.  We are on the back side of a real estate bubble so I'm not too sure that will work this time.
This means the US has 'painted it'self into the proverbial corner' We can get out, but at what cost? The current administration plans to increase every tax they can, grab as much central power too, and cut social spending on the elderly, a double punch that saves money on health care during a person's most expensive years, then saving money on Social Security payouts because of earlier death.

[LowGear]

Ahhhhhh.

The federal government wants to expand every program they can, National Health Care is being debated now. No other country has done it successfully

Why do other countries have better infant mortality numbers?  Life expectancy numbers?  We pay about twice as much as the next highest cost healthcare country but only have a few of the leading statistics.

Social Security is now running a net loss that has to be made up from the General Fund.

Do you have a source for this?  I think outgo is going to be something like $650 billion for 2009 and income being somewhere around $700 billion but my numbers feel fuzzy.

When Jimma Carter was prez, I was young and buying my first home. $370 per month for a little 700 sq. ft. house.

What I remember was housing interest going to 18% to slow down the inflation of the Vietnam war.  Kind of different from today.

And yes, I agree we're in the really deep dodue.  Perhaps our America can give up saving the world and start taking care of its self.  I keep looking for the section on World Domination in the Constitution and I just can't find it.  We have some hard questions coming up and probably a few unhappy answers.

Casey

[Doug]

Well put Casey.

One point I would like to make is the USA needs to stop trying to impose political and ecconomic systems on other countries with a stick. You can't carry a big enough stick anymore. And the best thing for the rest of the world now a stable productive USA, I am not sure what level of real recovery can happen unless the debt issues are resolved.

Some ideas are hard for Americans to swallow like socialized medicine. The reason is it flies in the face of everything American hold dear. Its a rationed level playing field and for a country with a history of " work and chose your own path to get ahead " there is not path and no way to get ahead you have to wait your turn, you must wait your turn in line.

[LowGear]

Hi Doug,

Let me shine some light on this for my American brothers and sisters.  All important life threatening situations are protected or handled by one socialistic system or another in the US as in every other civilized country I know about.  You?.  Who do you choose to purchase your fire protection, police protection, general education, public health, land and building development, road building, postal service and so on from?  The overwhelming vast majority of these goods and services are delivered by socialistic organizations that are chartered in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.  There is nothing in that document that reads "Free Enterprise Kicks Butt" or that “Gold is Good”.

The next time you have a fire please do a price check before you order the big red or yellow truck to come down your lane.   

Oops, I forgot the Department of Defense.

Casey

[SHIPCHIEF]

Casey;
Infant mortality is calculated differently in different nations. Some don't count it until after 30 days since birth. Some remove children born with problems from the statistical database.
These statistics are the same as others -- figures lie and liers figure.
People who smoke or eat a lot of cheap carbohydrate foods, then don't exersize tend to be the cause of lowered life expectancy. Diabetes and heart disease are self inflicted American ailments. And we can't say we don't deserve it.
Yes, those very same interest rates occured while Carter was prez. I lived thru it. The Vietnam war was over at that time, but it was a war fought on inflation, LBJ did that to us, and Nixon didn't or wasn't able to get congress to tighten the belt to control spending. This current recession is like that, only worse because the US is tapped out and the US Dollar might be removed as the world currency because we have not controlled it's value to the satisfaction of the users outside our borders (or inside for that matter-just my personal view).
As for Doug;
I too detest war. The simple problem of it, is that it's not a simple problem. Do we wait until more attacks come and the war is brought here, or do we meet it at the source and take it to them?
Do we nip it in the bud early so it never gets out of control, or do we wait longer to see what's up. Or engage in a holding action with no victory, and blow all our treasure and youth on an unending cesspool of death and waste? Once we make up our national minds, how many years before the national will caves in? Who benefits from the war and who benefits when it stops, even if we lose- or win?
What if the circumstances change in the middle of the stream, like we become broke and a few extra enemies decide to attack us while we are busy on the other side of the world?
I have no answer to any of those things, I'm not part of the leadership caste. I just try to anticipate the future enough to guide myself and loved ones away from the greatest dangers as we see them. And hopefully set aside something for the future...If we are not taxed too hard.
The Constitution is a pretty short document. It does not address free health care or a department of education etc. Those are all constructs that came later, like the federal income tax (16th amendment). There isn't even a separation of church and state in the Constitution, although most people think there is (in the 1st amendment). Funny document. everyone talks about it, no-one reads it. It's not taught in school. Must not be part of America's future plans?
The strangest thing happens when a society becomes heavily socialized. It falls apart. The weak do not get strengthened, only sustained. And the strong become as the weak. Eventually there is, well, Europe.

[LowGear]

Huh?

Let me edit it just a tad for the modern mind - Please.

We the People of the United States,
1.  in Order to form a more perfect Union,
2.  establish Justice,
3.  insure domestic Tranquility,
4.  provide for the common defence,
5.  promote the general Welfare,
6.  and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Vietnam War spanned the years of 1959 to 1975. Ergo, the US Presidents during this time were: Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.  Whos war was it?  It doesn't matter because the inflation that is going to occur in the next five to ten years is going to put us and probably the world on it's knees.  Plant vegetables if you can.

Our overthrow and occupation of Iraq is a war of offence not defence - see #4.

Congress shall make no law respecting
1.  an establishment of religion, or
2.  prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
3.  abridging the freedom of speech, or
4.  of the press; or
5.  the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
6.  to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Here's your chance everybody.  Gosh the first phrase in the first Amendment.  Kind of hard to miss.

Casey

[SHIPCHIEF]

Now I'm not to sure how we got here. I'm certainly not mad at you, in fact I'm having a great time. We agree on much and some of the stuff we dissagree on...I'm not to sure what that is.
I'm mostly concerned that our 'leaders' are not willing or able to make the right changes, that they still work on the patronage system, and pad every bill 15% with earmarks. They can't see that Gov't produces nothing, it drains the economy to perform administartive functions to keep the nation running smoothly. But it still takes production and invention to advance the economy and improve our future. Growth of government in it'self is not a good thing.
The Vietman war was inherited from the French, Kennedy sent 'advisors'; escalated during LBJ, de-escelation was the buzzword during Nixon, and Carter's term backed out of defense treaty obligations to South Vietnam, if I recall correctly.
Fighting communist agression was the reason. I don't really have a strong over view of any of this, I graduated from highschool in 1973. My draft number was 125, but they stopped drafting the year before. I have many close friends that did serve. Some died.
My parent's families volunteered for WWII, and we were expected to serve without complaint if called upon. I never was, and elected to become a Merchant Marine Engineer, starting school in 1973.
Casey, you have established for yourself that the current situation in Iraq was a war of conquest. That's fine. I saw Iraq as a springboard for more attacks on western culture. So for me and the United Nations (40 nations involved) it was a war to provide for the common defense.
Promoting the general welfare didn't start as welfare payments. General Welfare means to benefit the entire nation. It was intended as a limit to prevent 'specific benefit to a certain group' Building roads or dredging a canal was prohibited for the federal Gov't because the benefit was for that region, not the nation in general. National health care would be specifically prohibited because it benefits individuals at the expense of tax payers.
   To petition the gov't for redress of greivances... is an issue...as a mere citizen we are not allowed to sue the Gov't to establish that the president is a bonafide US citizen...those that have tried were told they 'don't have standing' because they are not uniquely injured....?
And, the first amendment. All those things you said, The gov't is not to establish a state religion, like say 'The Church OF England' but point 2 'Prohibiting the free excesize thereof..is being violated every day. On public and private property: the prohibition of prayer in school or the posting of religious signs etc at you work station or home. That's the ACLU's favorite lawsuit starter.

we got a long row to hoe....

[Stan]

Actually Pakistan was and is the real springboard for attacks on western culture.  Also it's not a coincidence that most of the oil left in the world that is easy to obtain is a very short hop and a skip from Iraq.  I hate coincidences.
Stan

[clytle374]

I strongly believe in blowback.  That the majority of our problems in these countries is based on our meddling in their affairs for decades.  Kinda like the Banana Republics, but now for oil.  We have done too many underhanded things to many of these people's countries protecting our oil supply, they hate us.  And not for our freedom.