paidslave said:I dont see any growth anywhere. [/QUOTE]
Really! You're just not looking in the obvious place that they don't want you to look. Here's your growth. Federal Deficit, Size and Scope of Gov't, Mandated Federal Education, Failing Test Scores, Illiteracy, Pressures to raise taxes, earmarks for buying votes, harmful blowback from foreign policy failures, and I'm sure you and others could add to this list. And this isn't an idictment of one party over the other, it's both. This thing has been a 3-way from the get go and we're the one's in the center taking it from both ends!
Seriously, I know you were already aware of these things and your observations were very good ones. As for which beauty queen contestant gets the crown and is the one to save us? The answer is none of them IMO or rather who is the one who will start to pull gov't back and inspire us to mobilize and repair things from the bottom up? The gov't has for decades IMO, you could even say for over a century been top tilting everything away from freedom and not so much to a true socialism or fascism in an absolute sense but in a odd hybrid way. They (left socialism and right fascism) are both there but rather everything has gone towards a monopolized merchantilism is which the gov't (it's own hegemony) not only protects the market as to who enters, who leaves and who wins. It's almost a Hegelian Dialectic in that they gives us a thesis and anti-thesis that being left socialism and right fascism as we've subdivided almost into those 2 camps but the synthesis they are most interested in is the autonomous power they achieve from both sides as we devour one another over 1 slice of pie. In the meantime, they and their merchantilist comrades run off with the rest of the pie and we're to damn stupid to see it because we are so fixated on getting all of that one small slice we can get.
Also as a financial arm they through their gov't proxies we blindly elect thinking they represent us are taxing us week to week through various payroll taxation for example and even what goods and services we can and can't buy but then they turn around and grant special priviledge to their favored merchantilist, fianance them with either specially written tax law or direct fund payments orchestrated by the jesters of the King's court (lobbyists). They even add insult to injury by first passing a law that monopolizes a certain market segment for them so they are protected from free market competition which IMO is a bedrock foundation to good economics. Once they control the market, it's not good enough because they want to expand globally but don't want to pay for this themselves.
How do they do this? Via their court jesters, they convince their lackeys in gov't to place a new tax law known as an excise tax that is embedded in goods and services and a tax you never see. You think when you buy a product, it's all for that product but here's how it really works. They embed the tax, the money is split 2 ways with some going to the elected leaders so they can spend money to buy votes at home so they can stay in power to keep the gravy train going and the other part goes back to the merchantilist is the form of gov't contracts and corp. welfare which in turn allows them easy money for either market expansion globally or in many cases, it further entrenches the rest of us into a business model that if a true free market existed, may in itself not exist at all.
In otherwords, business and gov't work together in that the gov't through it's police powers pass a tax which under force of law they collect. They take a % for themselves and in the legislative process spread that money around into other areas to further entrench their own power and we'll call that Tough Tony. That's the muscle. The Brains, "Da Boss" in other words get's back the lion's share in direct tax breaks, tax legislation that grants certain tax write offs that the rest of us are denied, exclusive gov't contracts many of which are cost/plus or the best is direct gov't funding through various means which allow under the umbrella of economic expansion is spun as a good thing. If you laid it all out on paper and left off the names to protect the innocent, you'd come away thinking you'd just stumbled on some nefarious crime syndicate and demand the police start arresting people!
This is the very reason Ralph Nader's idea of open gov't will never get anywhere because at least now you have to dig a bit to even get a hint of how this all works.
As for our economic woes, I keep hearing the coolaid drinkers say there is nothing wrong in the economy, all is well. OK but let me ask this in retort.
1) If that is the case, then why the fast track by both parties and President on the so-called stimulus packages that sailed through so fast you'd have thought it was the orgasm of a 16 year old boy having his first sexual experience? We're talking premature ejaculation here!
2) Why the reaction to the mortgage situation and the almost unheard of actions of the Fed to make an emergency cut only to follow weeks later in the normal meeting, another cut and now talk of even more?
3) Now comes the Reagan-Randian disciple of economics who even has extolled the virtues of Austrian economics in word but his actions of deed were always pure Keynesian who this past week uttered the "R" word. How do the coolaid drinkers get around that?
4) Who of us here works for a company that moves a large part of the national product on a daily basis and see for themselves up close and personal what the economy is doing? Are those boxes in number accelerating, are they flat or are they declining? Take the time to compare, look at this year's volume verse's last year but look deep. Don't just look at PKG Tools numbers but look all across the spectrum and at various customer trends. Most recent domestic volume numbers show us growing at only a little over 1% but some will say our size has to do with that! Really! Then why in the year ago results, our domestic volume grew at 3.6% for the Q ending?
It's slowing folks, the train is a slowing and they are hoping to put money in your pocket to buy your vote! 2 worse scenarios for them is you either won't show to vote in November or you start to really look and consider 3rd party alternatives.