How can the economy be saved.

[.... callchet ....]

[GliderGuider]

1. There are one too many words in the question.

Take out the initial "How" and you have a valid question.

[Warpy]

2. Jobs and wages are the only things that will work

First, through the government rebuilding old infrastructure and building new infrastructure.

While things like universal health insurance (and just covering the kiddies won't do a damned thing) might be necessary, they won't fix the real problem.

This is a JOB and WAGE crisis, nothing else.

[.... callchet ....]

3. Totally agree

with. What do you think are the best ways to pay for fixing and creating new infrastructure.

[Citizen Number 9]

6. Jobs, yes.

You can't just up and pay people more than they are worth.

That's a mistake.

[Cary]

7. What is "more than they are worth"?

And if your slogan is true, then please explain how executives in large corporations managed to get so much.

[Citizen Number 9]

9. I think that amount differs by the individual.

In most cases, executives get the job because they hve handled their duties well so far. Ultimately, each promotion people get is a test of what their worth is in that position.

[Fire1]

32. Totally agree! Start with Michigan!

[ThomWV]

4. A large but not porportionately equal mix of most of the above

[DJ13]

5. Wall Street and their shortsighted anything for buck mentality is the cause of our problems

Eliminate all compensation related to (often inflated) earnings.

Implement a tiered tax structure on capital gains (the shorter the time of the investment the higher the tax on the gains).

Penalize outsourcing by implementing punitive taxes that takes the profit motive away.

End commodity trading by any investors that cant take delivery of the physical goods they are speculating on.

Theres a bunch more, but thats a start.

[anigbrowl]

36. Your notion of a tiered tax on capital gains has som merit

"Implement a tiered tax structure on capital gains (the shorter the time of the investment the higher the tax on the gains)."

This is one of the better innovations I've seen proposed, in that it rewards investment more than speculation.

[Pale Blue Dot]

8. It can't.

We need to begin talking about what we do after the collapse. I know that nobody wants to hear this, and I'm banging my head against a wall, but it's the truth.

Save. Get to know your neighbors again. Get involved at the local level. This is about to get very, very bad.

[mikita]

10. agree totally n/t

[GliderGuider]

12. 16 votes out of 234 views tells me almost nobody thinks the options presented will work

Listen to Finnfan, people. I'm also convinced that the doomers have this one nailed.

I suspect we in North America and Europe (those of us who are not already feeling the effects, that is) have one month, maybe two, certainly no more than three to implement personal continuation strategies. I suggest the following:

Get out of debt. Completely. Right now.
Get your ass OUT of the stock market. Yesterday.
Strengthen your social networks.
Gain access to local food and non-commercial water.
Reduce your dependence on fossil fuels for transportation and heating, to as close to zero as you can.
Put together a 24-hour bug-out plan if you are in a situation that isn't survivable without commercial electricity.

If you can't easily do five of those six, take a long hard look at how you're living.

And in general:

Do not count on government for solutions, or even much help (and yes, that includes St. Barack the Omnipotent).
Do not assume the government or any of its representatives have your best interests at heart.
Do not believe that the media and their tame experts are telling you the truth.

[Citizen Number 9]

13. Count me as one who declined to vote in the poll

I think Chet might be a much better labor organizer than he is an economist.

On another note, I'm sorta interested in what a "personal continuation strategy" is.

I even tried Googling it. :)

[GliderGuider]

14. It means about what it says

"A strategy to enhance your chances of making it through a major disruption, but without the guns and freeze-dried lunches."

[.... callchet ....]

60. "doomers"

"also convinced that the doomers have this one nailed" the term doomers implies a continuation of policies perceived by some destined to fail. That

the doormers have this one nailed indicates that something unforeseen happened to make things go wrong. That the doomers were right by luck.

[GliderGuider]

63. "Doomers" are not about policy

Doomers, in the peak oil and social collapse usage, do not believe that any policies will prevent the onrushing negative outcome. In this case my comment meant that they are very probably correct (and IMO have been correct at least since the publication of "Limits to Growth" in 1972).

I personally think of doomers as redpills that awakened after the Matrix of modern civilization reached its terminal tipping point. By that metaphor those who are not doomers (cornucopians, singularitarians, humanists, politicians, economists and most environmentalists) are still bluepills.

[unlawflcombatnt]

11. Heavy Tariffs on all Imported Manufactured Goods

Tariffs will raise Federal revenue and by raising the price on foreign imports, reduce their demand. The comparatively lower price of US goods after tariffs will increase demand for American-produced goods, stimulating US production demand, labor demand, increased employment, and increased wages.

The increased American wages and employment will feed back on itself by increasing consumer buying power -- thus further increasing labor demand, employment, and wages.

Oh. And Tariffs will raise Federal revenue, instead of consuming it like a domestic stimulus plan will.

[Abq_Sarah]

61. Hoover's Smoot-Hawley tariff

Was absolutely horrible for the economy. It killed exports and tanked the stock market.

[barb162]

15. I'm not so sure it can be saved anymore.

Too many millions of jobs have been shipped overseas for too many decades.

[leftofthedial]

16. combination

tariffs, health care, increase taxes on wealthy and on inherited wealth, stop wall street crimes and speculation, rewrite all mortgages to low %.

All good ideas, but nothing will save this economy except a return to high employment with good, secure, middle-class jobs.

It's ALL about jobs.

[barb162]

17. Tariffs are a great idea but try telling that to free traders.

[leftofthedial]

19. that's part of the problem with Obama and his economic posse

[Citizen Number 9]

18. Very little of what you post is about jobs.

I've seen enough by now to realize that you are all about TAKING from those who have something and either GIVING it to those who don't or throwing it back into the general pot, presumably where (you?) can have a shot at it again?

Tariffs invite retaliation from abroad.
Health care is available, I just presume you want more for free.
Taxes on wealthy and inherited wealth is pretty obvious.
Stop Wall Street crimes - sure, let's stop them. Bank robberies, too. And child abuse. Let's stop it all.
Speculation is not a crime. Don't participate if you don't want to.
Mortgages at a low rate are not a "right".

Following that up with a desire for "jobs" doesn't fool me. What do you do to create jobs?

[leftofthedial]

20. solving the health care problem will create more jobs than

any supply-side bailout of any magnitude.

for one.

I've seen enough by now to realize that you are really a Newt Gingrich AI experiment.

[Citizen Number 9]

21. That's an interesting theory.

I wonder if it's correct.

Most of the health care remedies I've seen involve the loss of a substantial number of jobs in "health care".

How do you propose to make health care more affordable and create more jobs as well?

[leftofthedial]

22. according to surveys from sources as diverse as labor unions and chambers of commerce,

the current leading impediment to hiring in the United States is the high cost of health insurance benefits.

[Citizen Number 9]

24. A survey? Isn't that some sort of opinion poll?

Maybe they are right and maybe they aren't.

If we offer universal health insurance benefits, the major impediment to hiring might shift to being the high taxes that must be paid to support the new costs.

I'll ask you again. How will this help bring down the high price of health care and increase jobs?

[leftofthedial]

26. exactly the way I said.

high cost of health care is a huge impediment to hiring.

you asking a silly question doesn't change that.

[Citizen Number 9]

28. I have to ask questions.

If you're someone who makes things happen, they have to make sense....or they become failures.

It isn't enough to sit there creating gedanken experiments like some german scientist.

Got any answers?

[anigbrowl]

37. In other words, you don't have an answer

I'm hugely in favor of healthcare paid through taxes; I come from a country where that is the norm and I think it's for the best socially and economically...but it does make income tax quite a bit higher and it will never be perfect. If we could magic it into existence here tomorrow, in 10 years we'd just be blaming the govt for every wrong thing with healthcare like we do big business today.

Anyway, while I'm heartily in support of it, and we should get to work on it as soon as possible, it's not an instant job creation engine. In case you didn't know, there's a shortage of medical staff at the moment. Medical college courses are heavily oversubscribed. we'd have to get a lot of immigrants into the country to make up the numbers right now. Look into the history of the NHS in the UK - it's a good thing,but it's by no means a smooth ride.

[leftofthedial]

38. nothing that has been proposed is an instant job-creation engine

The OP listed numerous economic measures.

My first reply was responsive to those items. I merely pointed out that the only one I saw that related to job creation was health care. If the federal government took profit out of the health care system and provided single-payer universal coverage, it would stimulate huge job growth and remove the onerous overhead of maintaining employees.

Obama does not propose to do this. Rather, he proposes to enshrine the insurance company-based, profit-driven system as the basis for health care here in perpetuity, along with modest controls on the most egregious abuses that are inevitable in any capitalist-provider system. No solution is a panacea. No solution creates the 10 or 12 or 20 million good jobs we need asap in this country. But single-payer, not-for-profit, universal coverage is the only sustainable way forward.

My personal advice to the Obama team is that EVERY measure they take, every dollar they spend MUST be focused on job creation. No jobs, no economic health in this country. Unfortunately, his team is dominated by status quo insiders who share the current administration's top-down "free market" ideology.

[Citizen Number 9]

40. You're still making the same mistake.

Apparently you don't know that there are a large number of jobs "enshrined" in the business of health care.

I can appreciate that you might want to offer advice to the Obama team, but you don't appear to know too much about any of this, much less the actual cost structure of the Health Care System.

[leftofthedial]

45. it's not a mistake. do some basic research.

universal coverage will be a huge net gain in jobs. study after study after study.

It will cost zero jobs in actual health care, possibly many jobs in administration and insurance processing. Net gain, though, throughout the economy is very large.

I don't have time to educate you on the issue.

[Citizen Number 9]

48. I have news for you.

People employed in administration and claims processing in healthcare are considered to work in the healthcare sector, not just the nurse who sticks the needle.

By commonly bandied about numbers, 46 million are without health insurance. That's 15%. Moreover, many of those people actually receive some health care, they just receive it without benefit of insurance, often in a more intensive setting such as the ER.

I think it might be your turn to show universal coverage will result in a "huge net gain in jobs" and how we will avoid losing what is not an insubstantial number of jobs in the areas I already outlined.

You have not yet addressed how we will handle the costs, either.

I think you place way too much stock in talk and worse, political talk and opinion. You are always talking about studies, very few of which you ever cite.

You don't appear to have much, if any, experience in actually making things happen.

[Citizen Number 9]

39. Oh, I have answers

but they are tremendously unpopular among consumers of health care.


Our incomes cannot afford to deliver universal health care on the same standards as we have become used to.

[GliderGuider]

41. You gotta wonder how Canada's doing it, then.

We spend less than two thirds what the USA does per capita on health care, virtually everyone is covered, no one is faced with major out of pocket expenses, and our life expectancy (80.3 vs. 78.2) and infant mortality (5.1 vs. 6.3 per 1000) are better.

[Citizen Number 9]

42. Really. I am surprised at you.

There's much more to the Health Care picture than numbers.

You guys have lower expectations up there.

Besides, you don't have Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

[GliderGuider]

43. Once numbers leave the picture, opinion enters.

Lower costs and greater objective benefits seems to tell the tale. Beyond that we get into preferences.

I'll see your Mississippi and raise you a Nunavut...

[anigbrowl]

46. He has a point though

I'm totally with you on universal health care; I come from Ireland, where it also exists, and it happens my old man was a senior manager in the public health system for the last ~25 years or so until he retired. But even though I'm very strongly in favor, I think people who are advocating it here in the US don't fully appreciate the costs or timescales involved. Creating a US-NHS is going to be a herculean task with a lot of OMGWTF along the way.

[Citizen Number 9]

47. Ha ha, point taken

But to be fair, Nunavut represents about one tenth of one percent of your population while those states alone represent about 4% of the US population - 40X greater weighting.

But, there goes my theory that it's the warm Southern temperatures that are debilitating. I'll have to come up with something else.

Are you aware that US clinics, particularly in regions near the northern border see numbers of Canadian patients? These are people who otherwise qualify for your healthcare, but who are willing to pay cash for these procedures down South for a variety of reasons?

[GliderGuider]

49. US clinics see Canadian patients, and vice versa

Have you seen Moore's documentary Sicko? There's a story in it of Americans pretending to be Canadian so they can get services in Canada that they're being denied in the States.

[Citizen Number 9]

50. Michael Moore takes liberties

I can see how Americans would want to get FREE care, but the Canadians we see are paying cash. Cash that they wouldn't have to otherwise pay. The Canadians come for things that they have been denied, including technology that Canadian health care either doesn't recognize or simply won't pay for. They also come because of the substantial delays in getting very functional treatment. One can only presume that this is the future of a single payer US system.

I'd like to see a two tier system instituted here. That might be both affordable and sustainable.

[GliderGuider]

51. Americans are coming across to get treatment they have been denied by their insurance companies.

The example in the film was a woman who had been denied breast cancer treatment because she was judged as being too young to get the breast cancer she had. Of course that example was chosen to make a point, but the point itself is valid -- a lot of Americans are being denied treatment on financial rather than medical grounds.

Now, I'm a bit intransigent on this issue because my grandparents were founding members of the socialist party (the CCF, later the NDP) that brought universal health care to Canada. The underlying premise -- that no one should ever be financially ruined by the medical system -- is one in which I fiercely believe. Oddly enough, so do most Canadians. Our health care system is seen as one of our defining national institutions. Only our right wing political party and some conservative doctors want to see it changed, and even they know that proposing such a change would be political suicide.

[Citizen Number 9]

52. Well, there's going to have to be a whole lot more denial

if we go to a single payer system. We simply can't afford the cost of unrestricted/unregulated health care American style.

[.... callchet ....]

55. Denying health care

"Well, there's going to have to be a whole lot more denial" doesn't that got along with my premises of burdening the poor with their burden of

being poor. No matter what kind of a professional posture of indignation you can assume, you can't deny that denying health care is "wishing you

were dead". If the health system extended itself to the extent of 24 7 , then maybe I'd grant you to the limit of your abilities.


I saw a movie with Harrison Ford where he was a thoracic surgeon. He had or thought he had a disease. During course of his treatment while he was in

a waiting room he met an ill girl in the waiting room of the treatment doctor. Problem with that is, Heart Surgeons don't wait in waiting rooms.

[.... callchet ....]

54. Fast pass

Available to all but quicker for some ?

[PassingFair]

23. Create jobs, bring back the inheritance taxes.

Now, please.

:)

[Citizen Number 9]

25. It's too easy to look around and see money other people have earned.

And then try to get it.

Earn it yourself. That way you'll have a better appreciation for the true value of amassing money. :)

[PassingFair]

27. People who inherit money do not "earn" it.

They "inherit" it.

That's why they should be TAXED ON IT.

[Citizen Number 9]

29. Well, that's hard to argue with.

How many times do you think the same money should get taxed?

[GliderGuider]

33. Money should be taxed as often as it is used, just like now...

Do you think the dollar you have in your pocket wasn't taxed before you got it, or before whoever you got it from got it? Every time a dollar circulates in the economy it is taxed repeatedly. Inheritance taxes just put inheritances on the same footing as all other money.

[Citizen Number 9]

34. Well then,

I think I will just save them rather than have them taxed again. ;-)

[.... callchet ....]

53. Well

Kind of slippery there. Just agree with the point.

[GliderGuider]

30. "Earn it yourself."

Inheritances taxes promote exactly that, do they not? Requiring succeeding generations to each earn their personal stash?

It seems to me that inheritance taxes should be popular with both liberals and conservatives. For liberals it ensures that excess savings are eventually returned to the public pool; while for conservatives it ensures that each generation learns the value of money the hard way, by earning it...

[Citizen Number 9]

35. Yeah, I used to be on the fence about inheritance taxes

But since then I've decided it's best to give it to a good cause.

It's true that passing on the money only spoils the next generation.

[.... callchet ....]

58. If you are going to do well

you will do well. If you aren't going to do well that is the case also. If you have children that are bums, leave them the money. They will need it.

The others will take care of themselves.

[GliderGuider]

31. The economy cannot be saved in its current form. However,

There are things that should be done anyway, just because they will be helpful no matter what happens.

IMO, those things include:

- Introduce universal single-payer health care (of course as a Canadian I would say that, wouldn't I?)
- Institute inheritance taxes.
- Strip corporations of their "fictive personhood".
- Force the public valuation of all derivatives.

And a few more controversial ones:

- Declare a Jubilee.
- Ban the non-agricultural development of arable land.
- Legislate the re-use of industrial waste streams by the factories that produce them.
- Legislate zoning laws for all urban areas to permit growing food (including small-animal husbandry) and generating electricity from wind or solar anywhere.
- Institute a universal minimum wage.
- Vacate all mortgages and have the government assume the administration of the housing stock to prevent foreclosures during economic downturns.
- Institute a gasoline tax. Start at $1.00 a gallon, and increase it by $0.50/gallon each year until automobile vehicle miles traveled are reduced by half.

None of this will be done, of course, so the whole discussion is moot.

[.... callchet ....]

59. I have a problem with the gasoline tax.

I know people that have had their lives dramatically and negatively affect by the high gas prices. You simply would be riding the backs of the poor

to a solution. But guess what, the tax is such an easy solution, because the poor never complain.

[Abq_Sarah]

62. The law of unintended consequences

Would bite us in the ass with a huge increase in gas taxes.

The price of goods and services would immediately rise. So not only are we paying more for gasoline to drive to work and the grocery store, we're paying more for what we purchase as well with no corresponding increase in wages. When gas prices hit their highest point this summer, I was making less money than my employees because I didn't want to reduce hours or lay anyone off. My company operates in the black and we do not utilize lines of credit nor will we ever. Unlike food, medical or other essential suppliers, I can't jack up my prices to compensate for fluctuating expenses without losing customers. Long term high gas prices in a depressed economy will be the end of my business and many others.

[.... callchet ....]

64. Obama and Pelosi don't get it.

High gas prices kill the poor. The poor get beat to death. Obama and Polos had no problem with $5/ gallon gas. They only got on the band wagon after

the populist revolt against the drilling ban. I know couples with children that spent $500 a month for gasoline. That was 17% of their take home

pay. Our leaders are liberal elitists and they have to morph into liberal humanists. They don't understand that for most USAmericans that out of work

means out of money. They don't understand that losing your job isn't a sabbatical to develop your creative skills. It is a disaster. We need to

convert them into liberal humanists.

[4dsc]

44. What exactly are we going to save concerning this economy??

This economy was built upon one bubble after another bubble.. Most of those bubbles have burst(I'm still waiting for the credit bubble to burst). None of the questions listed will somehow "save the economy" (whatever that means).

Therefore I'm not going to vote either..

[.... callchet ....]

56. Substitute

USA for economy

[.... callchet ....]

57. Should have used USA instead of economy

Should have been " How can we save the USA"