How would you fix America's economic problems if you had the authority to do it?

Two words, MEGA DITTOs.

I absoutely agree.

 

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As long as we are talking about fixing the US, I would also reform government...get rid of the influence of lobbyists. You cannot run an effective government when Congress is constantly giving out favors to special interests.

In the end you wind up with a misshmash of conflicting law and policy, which is what we have today.

 

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That worked OK for the nation's need in the early 1800s. Then only a few percent of the population needed to be able to read, think independently, etc.
Most everything was done manually. For example, to walk behind a plow pulled by a horse or chop firewood etc. requires essentially no formal education.

In this century there is little need for unskilled (uneducated) labor and the nations the US competes with are growing faster mainly because they educate their population in math and sciences better than the US does. (While these subjects are useful in themselves, their main educational value for society is their development of rigorous and analytical thought capacity.)

If there were only private schools, then only parents would be paying for the general benefits that education confers upon the society. Only the relatively rich could give significant education to their children. Soon the nation would be forced to live with an elite leadership and unskilled masses - I.e. return to the life style of the early 1800s or that currently practiced by the "plain people" of Pennsylvania (no cars, TVs, tractors, etc.)

That is a sustainable life style and our petroleum based one is not so I am not strongly opposed to that way of life, but you must understand only that low tech manual labor life style is possible if only a few are well educated. Also as the Pennsylvania Dutch do, you must close your society off from the outside world.

I favor Federal funding of ALL primary education as the current local funding system, is causing many not to be educated to their potential in the US.
I.e. I favor NO private schools prior to college with equal educational opportunity for all. (Not good primary schools only in the neighborhoods of the wealthy.)

Using only a small part of the potential brain power available in the US is the main or fundamental reason why the US is losing its competition with others who do better job of educating their populations. We are trying to live in this century, not the early 1800s, yet have an educational system that is more suited to the life style of the early 1800s. One producing a well educated elite with most of the population poorly educated.

It is little wonder that US has world's highest crime and prison costs etc. The undereducated see what the elite has and find socially destructive ways to try to get the material goods the elite enjoys. Perhaps even more damaging to the US is that the masses cannot think for themselves and are easily manipulated by special interest groups and politicians. For example: Support the profit based health-care system instead one that delivers up to four years longer life expectancy at half the cost. Other examples in my old thread:
How Dumb can US Voters be? At: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1689226&postcount=103
(It was made in failed effort to keep GWB from getting second term. The dumb voters will soon pay for their ignorance by living in the world's worst ever depression.)

Note that they are "dumb" is a result of the US education system - the fundamental root of the US's problems. For example lack of adequate education let selfish, commission-hungry, bankers etc. sell them houses they could not afford, etc. and made the present economic collapse.

 

Agreed. The issue of the American underclass is too often ignored. But it will become an increasing burden and problem for the United States if not addressed. These are the people who lack the skills to thrive in our society...that includes social skills as well as technical and intellectual abilities. I suspect this is a rapidly growing class of individuals (especially when you look at the American political stage).

 

The US does need to be more competitive, but always remember that freedom is more important than utility...just keep that in mind. If something that's gonna make us "competitive" is gonna make us less free and give us bigger government, then it isn't worth it.

I agree. We need free-er markets and an emphasis on charity and independence. Mandatory obligations on employers and trade restrictions regarding insurance between states have got to go. So does corporate welfare and protectionism.

No. We do need to reduce our energy costs and dependence on oil, but that isn't going to happen through legislation. Let the markets work.

I don't like many of the trade agreements that hinder trade like the NAFTA.

Nonsense. Just think through what you just said: schools were in less demand back in the 1800's, and so schools were typically more expensive (since it wasn't seen as "necessary" to get a job).

In this day and age, where skilled labor is in high demand, private schools would be much cheaper. There would be a high demand for them, and public schools would no longer serve as barriers to private schools. All schools would be private, and plenty of people would desire education......so that spells low tuition costs. In fact, many private schools cost less than public schools. It's just that you have to pay twice if you send your child to a private school (taxes+tuition).

Not to mention, there could and would be community efforts and organizations to help the very poor afford their education. And if we really need it, we could have vouchers (this would be a states' issue).

We should also allow schools to be more selective, and we should stop having education as being compulsary. If people want to learn, then let them learn, and if they want to be idiots, then let them be. It's their own future they're screwing up, and I see no reason why we ought to waste money on these people.

Nonsense. We already have welfare, free education, medicaid, public libraries, and so many more "public services"...how are people still an "underclass"?

You know why? It's 'cause they're lazy and don't take their education seriously, don't want to get a job, and have no entrepreneurial ambition. If we are spending this much on public services and people still fall through the gaps, then it isn't a funding issue. It's an issue with them.

 

)-(eYya BiL|_y~T

Thank you for your time and effort.
This is the real debate isnt it, the debate of do we as the knowing elite seek to make the dumb masses accountable to themselves knowing they actually oppose what we seek only because they are a product of a machine that made them mentally ill.
it makes me wonder about the debate concept between benevolent dictatorship and true democratic systems to show themselves for a will of the people or a spiritual ideal of a species.
the 2 are mutually exclusive in almost every corner of the world.

Personally i support a Socialist base structure with free market enterprise inside a framework of government regulation designed to prevent the bohemoths that eat till they died of a heart attack and fell over dead killing all those that they grew off in their eco system.
What this point now highlights is the bastardisation of intellectual ability put through the elitists where they have been brainwashed against any concept of socialism in spite of trading with it and profiteering from it almost every single day of their lifes.

im currently juggling the thought of raising a topic of societal mental health as a cultural point of societal cannibalism although im yet to formulate the variable consequences of this potential awareness upon the greater public.

though my point of my question was more soo to illustrate what you already know and take for granted i think it good to outline it for the rare person that might actually follow what we post.
in that;
fundamentally along with private health care, private schooling is a complete failure and a system that is destroying our society.
only by creating and maintaining a solid public school and health system may we then play with elitist concepts of higher ability through privatisation.
suffice to say its a complete joke to expect a privately educated child to be measurably more intellectually developed than a public school child if we remove the right to free health care as an infecting agent upon the childs life and physical and mental development.
social structures of gang land slums etc not withstanding, being hard enough to find a poor area where the school is equally funded to achieve supposed equality(another blatant lie that children grow up to live and know).

 

define "free"
since that is a critical measure of your example to oppose on this concept.
you seem to assume it has a collective meaning however we have a very diverse range of opinions on various issues.


you need to qualify your critical measure by defining what it is that is being measured by the terminology "free"

you equate "free" as having a critical value that is relative to a defined pattern of existence.

example for you(if you need one)
free means not having to have a person(police officer) point a gun at you and tell you that you cant do "x" ?

 

I doubt the 37 million Americans now not free from hunger and needing emergency boxes of food each month would agree with part of your post I made bold.

Quite often back then wealthy families had a "live-in tutor" - Their children did not go to school (and of course the children of the poor did not go to school; they worked in the fields or a factory if urbanities as soon as they were able.). Certainly schools that did exist were much LESS expensive back then. Typical a one room school with a single teacher for all grades. Often she was very poorly paid and perhaps lived with one of the richer families of the community.
Your post is filed with false statements, hardly worth replying to.

This is unsupported opinion, false as far as I can tell. I even doubt that most would "desire education" - they do not now and many only attend because the law requires it or they want to be part of the school's sports team. I do not have data on the cost of private primary schools vs. public schools, but certainly private colleges are much more expensive than state universities. For example, the University of Maryland was about 1/3 the cost of Johns Hopkins when I went to JHU.

Now you have lost all touch with reality! I doubt if in all the USA you can name even one "community effort" (of a well off suburban community) that is sending funds to improve a poor urban center school. Not even sending a few traps to catch the rats that bite some children in slum schools. Get real!

Well they will rob and steal, sell drugs etc. instead of starve, if not qualified for a legal job is one reason. More important is that if properly educated (schools equal to those in rich neighborhoods) some will make great positive contributions to society.

There is essentially no evidence that the average potential intelligence of any large group of humans (race if you like, but that is a poorly defined, obsolete concept) is significant greater than any other. The variation of intelligence within each group is much larger that any difference between groups. Thus, as the majority of US schools are doing a poor job of educating their students, America is failing to develop more than half of its potential geniuses. Our competitors, especially Japan and China, are not so stupid. They are giving all their citizens good educations and as a result have much less problems with crime, drugs, and have prison costs less than 10% of the US's costs.

 

)-(eYya BiL|_y~T the reason norsefire doesn't make much sense on many of these things is because he is still trying to win an argument that is from his childhood.
i dont usually do this but i mention it in the hope it will help norsefire move on to a new level of understanding and it also serves as a good example of what we are facing with these issues.
what you see is him picking stats and facts out of his ass which instead of being actual topics of conversation and personally expressed ideas, they are conversation winner-stoppers for getting one-up on his father or other school students in an elitist private schooling situation.

his bias is fairly obvious that he has been raised in a political right wing family or school and this has abated his ability to debate subjects.
winning became the most important and facts and stats went out the window as gestures and bravado and loud talking became the new self validation among other sheep.

that is why you will see jumps in his thinking from one thing to the next missing out entire cause and effect variables that can change the entire outcome of one coarse of action(political economic/social theory).

he is the typical child of the elitists brain washing approach to the naturally gifted.
instead of his energy going into developing his mind it has been stunted by the need to be standing on top of another person.
probably wont get over this psychological wall till he is in his late 60s.

which is when he will break all his rules and probably start taking superanuation pay outs from the socialist government system and start giving away his own personal freedom in exchange for peace of mind security to be able to walk to the shops without being killed for his lunch money.

 

I would do the following:
- cut military spending
- Lower taxes for small business
- Raise taxes on goods drastically, imported from outside NAFTA
- Reform Welfare
- Establish a public health option
- Make college availible to everyone
- Deport illegal immigres
- Stop giving corporations money ( and of course stop exec. bonuses!)
- Lower government employee wages
- Raise taxes on Corporations that export our jobs
- Raise taxes to meet social program spending and if the people don't like it cut the programs
And ensure Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness

 

Just a quick one to add to the list.

I would outlaw any company that moves it's operations to places like Mexico,China etc from sending its products back into the US.How many jobs have been lost cause of this practice?

 

Start a war.

 

The problem is taxes. When we tax businesses out of here we can't blame them for going. The only way to keep/encourage them is to give them tax breaks at least for their first year. The other thing is to buy nothing from China or Mexico. It's mostly crap anyway.

 

We already are fighting two wars already!

 

Pfft..that's not enough. We need a third world war.

 

Iran just might be next.

 

Oh? In that case I hope that the war ends quick enough without getting nukes, and all that nuclear sh-t involved. Would suck..

 

Speaking of war last I looked at the War cost counter,since 2001 the Middle East Wars have cost the US 365 Billion dollars thus far.If that same money had been used for say something like renewable energies how much of the US could have been running on solar,wind,wave etc? At least 75% I'd say,hell maybe all of the US.Were so doomed!