Make this a stickey, we all want it! I think it's doomed because they are based on capitalist ideals but those only take you so far until things for selling run out, then you're left with a consumer based system in place with no real method of continuing it's development. After-all I knew oil would run out eventually in high school and told my teacher, he laughed and said it was ok. I came back with the argument a true resource is always renewable, if it can't be renewed how can you come to depend on it forever? lol He was mad at me for this argument. So yea, I want a society with sculpted houses, land isn't owned there but lived on, if you don't need to live there you can't possess it. So no more owning land, that's gotta stop or else the homeless won't ever have lives. Ahem, so many ideas I have you'd all hate lulz Let's just talk about is the economy in the USA doomed and why or why not?
darksideZz, what about the people who want to rent houses rather than owning them? After all if you rent you only have to pay part of the water bill (if any) and the rent. Matenance, rates and the rest of the water bill, the swerage charges ect come out of the rent and are the landlords problem. You just worry about the electricity, phone and gas
Basically it is doomed because Currency has become a plowshare for the wealthy elite to collect everything.
Arthur C. Clarke proposed replacing all paper currencies with a single global unit of value based on the kilowatt hour.
That is really a good idea since most countries can produce energy using various means. Even a farmer can, using wind, solar, bio-fuel. This could somewhat equalize between rich and poor countries too...
If it be done, I smile for once. A question of whether the USA will fail is really good because we all know instinctively it will, but... some will say it'll last forever and capitalism is perfect, lulz I see the collapse of the USA as inevitable, merely because they are consumer-based amoung the other silly things they have going for them.
It's also doomed because of the stupid American public averaging an $8,000 credit card balance. We think this crisis is bad, huh...just wait until Americans get to the point of not being able to pay their credit card bills. The Capital Market Subcommittee met Thursday and the chief economist for the GAO made this same correlation. He said that credit needs to be capped for Americans, and he is correct. Everyone buys stuff with credit anymore. We just bought a new car recently and paid cash for it. The dealership looked at us funny when we said we were not financing it. In fact, I have noticed that people act like you are weird if you don't have debt. It's a sad state this country is in.
Yes, the US economy used to be based on producing and saving. Now, its based on borrowing and consuming.
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Banking/P91828.asp "Goodbye, dollar. So long, euro and yen. Hello, dey! Dey? It's a proposed combination of the three currencies, which could eventually form the basis of a global currency. A worldwide money won't emerge any day soon. Still, it's a longtime dream of some economists, who point out several advantages to simplifying the jumble of nearly 190 currencies. For starters, the world trades about $1.2 trillion worth of currencies a day. If that market disappeared, it would save companies and individuals hundreds of billions of dollars a year in foreign-exchange and hedging costs. Another benefit: no more national currency crises, which have riled Argentina, Mexico, Thailand and Russia in recent years. No country would have a balance-of-payments problem or need to maintain reserves of foreign assets, such as currency or bonds, to counter dramatic fluctuations in the market. The end of currency fluctuations would also stabilize international business. Manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic, for example, would no longer have to adjust to huge changes, such as the slide in the value of the euro from $1.17 initially in 1999 to 83 cents two years ago then back up to about $1.22. The value of stocks and other assets in countries now subject to high currency risks and inflation would also soar hugely as investors became more reassured of values. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker has said a truly globalized world economy needs a global currency. But world money has drawbacks too. No single nation could adjust its domestic monetary policy to remedy a specific economic situation. So the Fed could no longer lower interest rates to counteract an economic slump. Also, central banks would not be in competition to maintain low-inflation rates for their money. Then there's the question of management. The Federal Reserve is independent of the White House, but is a creature of Congress and thereby not fully independent of the political process. So it "must always look over its shoulder to see how Congress is responding to its policies," says Richard Cooper, a Harvard economist who proposes a common currency for the major industrial democracies. If finding a good governance system for a nation's central bank is hard, finding one for the industrial democracies, or the world, could prove even more difficult, he concedes. Then there are the human ties. Losing a national currency is "a very emotional thing," says John Marthinsen, an economist at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. "It's like losing your flag." Still, there are moves to consolidate currencies -- of which the euro is only the most obvious example. Eight former French colonies in Africa have long shared a common currency. Since 1981, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank has provided the EC dollar to about a dozen island nations, including Antigua, Barbuda, Dominica, Montserrat and St. Lucia. Next year, the Gulf Cooperation Council plans to launch a common currency for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Also in 2005, the West African Monetary Zone plans to introduce the eco to Ghana, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. Proponents are pushing for more. Last month, Robert Mundell, a Columbia University economist and Nobel laureate, and a small group of economists and officials considered plans for a world currency at his personal conference center in Siena, Italy. It is Mr. Mundell, famed for his supply-side economic theories, who talks of the "dey."
Before WWII, in Germany, their currency was so devalued people would go grocery shopping with carts of money. Look at them now. The USA is just learning a new lesson at the moment. Or rather... it's NOT learning, thanks to the government... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Doesn't the economy depend on endless growth? Isn't endless growth inherently unsustainable? We do depend on finite resources of all kinds, but oil is the big one. I think the world's economy is doomed. Perhaps we depend on credit so much because we aren't earning as much, this country doesn't convert raw materials into wealth like it used to.
The economy will evolve and continue to change as it has since the dawn of time. The same as society will change and evolve throughout time. Nothing stays the same. Everything evolves. The current method that the USA uses for the stabilization, (or not) of it's economy won't be the same 50 years from now. The economy won't collapse. It may have it's ups and downs, but it will adjust back to center-line periodically during its shifts. Will the economy have a period of extreme low? I doubt it. The money managers are getting too good at handling severe fluctuations. Look at the extreme methods being attempted right this moment to resolve the current screw-up. The managers will learn again. Each of the huge mistakes will result in huge gains in learning for the people who didn't see this coming in time to stop it before it became an emergency.
Since civilization began, we could use domestic animals for power, then wood fuel, then coal, then oil and gas. These steadily increasing sources of power are reflected in our societies. However, this trend cannot continue. We will soon run into a limiting factor, cheap energy will no longer be available. No doubt there will be some kind of economy in the future, but it might be based on vegetables.
As the decades go by, I think energy will become cheaper and cheaper. We'll figure out how to provide it for free eventually. Now veggies for money.....I like that idea! I've a very veggie person! Dishes from India being my favorite. I like the veggies, I like the heat. Masala madness.
