Best. Comment. Ever.

Susan of Texas said, (at Sadly!No blog)
March 17, 2008 at 15:34

"Conservatives really are perpetual teenagers, raiding the refrigerator, using up all the gas in the car, taking money from your wallet, and constantly whining about how overworked and mistreated they are."

The irony of course, is that this is what's always been said of Democrats. Perhaps, sans the whining... But the state of the World today is frightening, not only for the actual realities, but because it's History Repeating.

Think Jimmy Carter.

Worst President ever, right? Somehow, he's been left with that reputation. Nice guy, but too bad he was such a LOSER.

Fact is, he had a bad situation, and because he did the "hard work" required to actually remedy it, he is reviled. Because he didn't lie to the American public to fudge numbers, as Bush has been doing for years, he's remembered for economic failures. He understood the energy crisis and did something about it. All the good he did during his term was undone by Reagan. And now we've come full circle. With Reagan's bastard child in the White House, we've moved from economic surplus to record deficits, and are now falling headlong into recession. We're more dependent on foreign oil than ever, which has gone from $27 a barrel when he took office to $110 this past week.

You know, I'm not an economist. In fact, I don't know much about economics at all. It seems to me however, that when all of your government's policies encourage American dollars to go overseas, out of our economy, without anything to show for it, it can't be good for America. Some examples?

Major corporations moving their offices overseas, to places where they won't have to pay American taxes or American wages. They pay pennies to manufacture, then sell in the US for really high markups. Which are paid to CEO's, who put the money into offshore accounts, again, untaxed by the US.

War. We supply goods and services to feed the war machine through contractors that we pay far more than market value. Those contractors pay wages to non-Americans, resulting in the money going to other countries. How much money? Well, "The Nation" reported the following estimated figures, as the government will not release actual numbers:

Estimated number of U.S.-(taxpayer)-paid private contractors in Iraq: More than 180,000, again undoubtedly an all-time high. That figure includes approximately 21,000 Americans, 43,000 non-Iraqi foreign contractors (including Chileans, Nepalese, Colombians, Indians, Fijians, El Salvadorans, and Filipinos among others), and 118,000 Iraqis, but does not include a complete count of "private security contractors who protect government officials and buildings," according to State Department and Pentagon figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The cost in dollars? From the same article:

Typical pay of a former U.S. Special Forces soldier working for a private-security company in Iraq: $650 a day, according to Scahill, "after the company takes its cut." That rate, however, can hit $1,000 a day.

But our toops? (according to http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11551)

• Salary of U.S. soldier: $1,100 to $2,500 per month
• Salary of British commando: $3,500 per month
• Salary of Iraqi soldier: $70 per month

Aside from the numbers just being obscene, it also should be evident that all of those dollars are coming from the US and being sent permanently to other countries.

And the most frightening exit of cash; to China. See, we are borrowing MILLIONS of dollars every week from China. Which we pay interest on. And will need to pay back some day. So they take the money we're paying them to loan us money, and buy raw goods to make shoddy items at slave wages, only to sell it back to us at HUGE markups. What do we sell them to even things up? Nothing. Nor do we tax properly their imports, which leads to people buying things made in China because Wal-Mart can sell it cheap, which leads to less domestic jobs, which results in the need to buy cheap goods at Wal-Mart....

You see the difficulty.

Somehow, we got the notion during the Reagan Administration that if the Stock Market was doing well, we all were doing well. I suppose that at some point in history, that might have been true. That was before CEO's got greedy, and Reagan deregulated EVERY FUCKING THING so that CEO salaries could grow to mind numblingly high numbers that can't even be comprehended by mortal beings, while middle class salaries actually dropped. The problem is that the Stock Market is only a part of the economy. The part that makes its income through dividends and interest and mergers. The part that doesn't create jobs, or goods.

I know it's all a lot more complicated; economics is way over my head. But it seems fairly "DUH" to see that our economy is tanking because of the insane economic policies once called "Voodoo" by Daddy Bush.

So what can we do about it? And how can the next President get us out of this mess without being "Jimmy Cartered?"

Don't look at me! I am SO not that smart. I'll just get ulcers worrying about it.