the only ones talking politics are you two. I was a proud Reagn republican (pro life) who voted for bush in 2000. but thats neither here nor there., this is an econ discussion.
please dont lock my thread because of people who cant seperate poltics and economics. just delete their replies or somethng.
jen, how do you “end” social programs? you dont just GET medicare. you pay into it for at least 10 years (most people pay medicare tax their entire working years). Social securyt is the same. so just “screw you” to the people who ahve paid into it for 29 years and are set to retire? talk about entitlement theft!
I can see a phased elimination, but benfits to retirees are paid for by taxes on workig people, so how do you gradually phase it out? you dont. get used to S.S. and medicare. they’re not going anywhere. AARP is too strong, old people vote. a lot.
as NCs pointed out, this was rntirely nonpolitical. 1999 happened to be the peak of a bull market.
I see $4 a gallon gas in our future. this will create an oppurtunity for detroit to roll out electric cars (which were piloted succesfully in 2000), but they’ll squander the opurtiunty and the japanese will gain more market share.
NCS, part of the instability of the dollar goes back to the record trade defciits we’ve been running lately. a country that is selling off its manufacturing base, as weve been doing for years, isnt a good investment. a weak dollar makes our exports cheaper, but what the hell do we export anymore?
housing, gas prices, stagnant incomes, flat stock market, falling dolar, and loss of manufacturing. Our consumer-driven ecnomy isnt resilient enough to deal withj all that. i think we’ll be lucky to get out of this with jusyt a recession.
lets look at a typical commuter family:
Income $60,000 (quite a bit above median incoem) a year
Gas at $3.50
miles travelled per day, entire family: 150 (75 miles round trip really isn’t much of a commute anyremo)
around 240 working days in a year.
average of 25 MPG for family cars.
Total miles driven JUST FOR WRK: 36,000
1440 gallons.
$5000
summary: just driving to work and back for a typical family with tipical cars costs almost 10% of their income. If theyre at median income level, its over 10%. nevermind the miles they drive outside of work. just work alone.
the savings rate is negative. Families have an average credit card debt of $8500. health care continues to increase.
i don’t see how the averge american family can weather falling home prices, record foreclosures, and record gas prices. theyre gonna cut back on spending and that is what drivs the economy.,
I doubt gores recount challenge sent the economy into a tailspin. :roll:
bankruptcy laws vary. some allow you to keep your home some don’t
"16. Can I keep my house after bankruptcy?
The exemption is limited to $125,000 of your state’s homestead exemption if the property was acquired within the previous 1215 day (3.3 years). The cap is not applicable to any interest transferred from a debtor’s previous principal residence (which was acquired prior to the beginning of such 1215-day period). How does this work?
Example 1: In Arizona, the homestead exemption is $100K. No matter when you have acquired your home, the amount of equity you are allowed to keep in your home is $100K. If you have more equity than this, you will probably be forced to sell.
Example 2: Kansas, Texas, Florida, Iowa, and South Dakota have unlimited homestead exemptions. So if you have $1 million in equity in your $2 million dollar Texas mansion, and you’ve owned it more than 3.3 years before filing a bankruptcy, the equity is completely exempt. If you bought it within the last 3.3 years, you are only allowed to have $125K in equity."
http://www.creditinfocenter.com/bankruptcy/bkfaq.shtml#14
but keeping your home or not has nothing to do with the number of bankuptcies over the last year. as i’ve shown they’ve more than doubled. maybe you think a foreclosure is the same as a bankruptyc? often time, one leads to the other, but they are never counted as the same thing.
**Monday, Aug 06, 2007 –- U.S. Bankruptcy filings surged last month, as the
housing market turmoil that has recently spooked Wall Street also played out
in federal bankruptcy court. July filings are up 38% over filings from the same
month in 2006.
Total bankruptcy cases for the first seven months of this year are already
50% higher than they were this time last year, according to data from Jupiter
eSources LLC, which operates Automated Access to Court Electronic
Records, a bankruptcy research firm.** http://bankruptcy-statistics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=58&Itemid=44
The facts and jens rosy picture are at odds.
Median income still below 1999 level.
Even
though overall household income has
not yet recovered to its 1999 prerecessionary
peak of $49,244 (in 2006
dollars), the gap is narrowing.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf
While median household
income in 2006 rose by 0.7 percent,
the real median earnings of both men
and women who worked full-time,
year-round declined between 2005
and 2006 (Table 1 and Figure 2).
same source.
Jen, youre deluded about bankruptcies:
http://www.bankruptcyaction.com/USbankstats.htm
The number of chpater 7’s was 63,00 march 2006
131,000 june 2007.
Also leave your opinion of the 2000 election out of it. this is an econ trhead. i don’t want it turning political and getting locked.
1999- 11723
2007- 13042
without going into the politics of the isue I think we can all agree its been a dismal 8 years.
where do you guys think the Dow, the dollar, oil and housing are headed? wil the latest recals from china signal a consumer backlash? or are we too used to shoping at walmart?
The arctic is made up of more than just floating ice. theres plenty of non-floating ice that can raise sea levels (only about three feet though in 100 years). the real danger is greenland and antarctica.
heres a take on increased snowfall in the antartic:
**Climate scientists have long suspected that warming the oceans around a very cold continent is likely to dramatically increase snowfall. Consider Antarctica. It’s plenty chilly, dozens of degrees below freezing, and it’s surrounded by water. The warmer the water, the greater the evaporation from its surface, and, obviously, the more moisture it contributes to the local atmosphere.
So, when this moisture gets swirled up by a common cyclone, do you think it’s going to fall as rain in Antarctica?** http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/qthinice.asp
the auithors of the article believe there are enough checks and balances in the climate to mitigate any damge humans caus to the environment. im not so sur on about that.
Greenland is the real troublespot thes days: Scientists believe Greenland’s glaciers are sliding into the ocean much faster than earlier thought, a new report says.
The loss of ice from Greenland doubled between 1996 and 2005, as its glaciers flowed faster into the ocean in response to a generally warmer climate, according to a NASA/University of Kansas study.
“The school governor who challenged the screening of Al Gore’s climate change documentary in secondary schools was funded by a Scottish quarrying magnate who established a controversial lobbying group to attack environmentalists’ claims about global warming.”
thats not somethin g you can ignore. some of the conservatives here need to think a little harder. more good news:
"WASHINGTON - While some indicators have stabilized, the Arctic is seeing significant changes from warming temperatures and shrinking sea ice, the Bush administration said Wednesday in an annual report card on the region.
Sea ice fell well below the previous record, caribou are declining in many areas and permafrost is melting, according to the State of the Arctic report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21347288/
Compared to most of the major battles of the civil war DDay was pretty tame. Cold harbor, picketts charge, antietam, Fredericksberg, Shiloh, Wilderness were all blood baths, and not just because americans were fighting americans. The North lost horrendous amounts of men to outdated tactics. i Guess when you introduce a rfile that can kill at half a mile for the first time, your gonna see lots of casualties before the tactics catch up to the technology.
@cystic:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE&mode=related&search=
This is a good angle for a the action. You can clearly see him trying to get away from the cops. Even when they had him on the ground, he was still telling them to “get the F*** off of me” and squirming around. You can also here the officers tell him to stop resisting or they would taser him. He didn’t listen and zap.
I wonder if this guy was drunk or high. He reminds me of these really aggressive guys who are brought into the ER with a head injury or after substance abuse or not taking their anti-psychotics. They pretty much sound and act like this guy when we need to “5-and-2” them (5 mg haloperidol, 2 mg ativan) - although they are much more peaceful afterwards :)
oh yeah - the guy is clearly a stupid and whining little b****. I hope that they nailed him in the nads and destroyed his reproductive ability . . . i mean presuming he could find a woman to procreate with (“were you and George Bush members of the skull and bones secret societies”???) it would be nice to know that he couldn’t.
kind of ironic your calling him stupid and youve never heard about one of the most secret organizatons in America?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_and_Bones
yes, kerry and bush are both members: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/02/60minutes/main576332.shtml
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE&mode=related&search=
This is a good angle for a the action. You can clearly see him trying to get away from the cops. Even when they had him on the ground, he was still telling them to “get the F*** off of me” and squirming around. You can also here the officers tell him to stop resisting or they would taser him. He didn’t listen and zap.
That video makes it even more pathetic. At 1:11 on the vdieo, hes on the ground, with the woman cop talking to him and pointing at him. they had hiom on the ground for at least thirty seconds and you can see the woman cop by his head even waving handcufs around.
six cops can’t get cuffs on a kid in thirty seconds? pathetic
six cops coulndt subdue one college student? they ought to hang up their badges.
whther abortion is murder or not is actually a philosphical discussion. what to DO about it would cros over into political.
Switch, Classic is very much a defense-oriented game. Defending in classic A&A is simply cheaper than attacking. 100 INF cost 300 IPC’s, and it’s impossible to create an attacking force for 300 IPC’s that will give you equal or better odds. 60 tanks vs 100 INF gives you a ZERO percent chance to win, with an average of 50 or so INF left over. Even 50 tanks and 10 bombers (well over 300 IPC’s) gives you a zero percent chance to win.
INF are so good at defending, the goal is to quickly take territory, then mass stacks of infantry for defense in the mid and later game. This is why, in classic A&A (non RR), Germany will almost always put at least 3 inf in Egypt to take and hold long enough for Japan to start shucking INF to hold Egypt. It costs the allies a lot more to take Egypt than it does Japan to defend it. Same with WE, EE, Berlin, Karelia, and Novo.
I can certainly get behind a simpler tax system. I can also get behind one that doesn’t seem to punish me for not having a family.
my father was at Omaha beach to protect familyless scum like you. from hells heart I stab at thee. JK :lol: