Michigan and the USD

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Michael, Apr 22, 2012.

  1. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    OK, I'm half way though a beer or 4 and I got to thinking about Michigan.

    We had a very prosperous economy and massive production. At one time 1 in 10 jobs were directly connected to GM alone. We had Ford, Chrysler, etc... Absolutely massive productivity. Real wealth. Not a printing press like that douche Bernanke, but real production.

    I worked at GM at one time. It was really good money, maybe too good. My grandfather was paid about $85,000 a year as a master mechanic in 1985. That's 1985. His grandkids, a few anyway, make $36,000 working in what's left of GM.

    Michigan is decimated.

    So? What of New York? New York seems relatively fine in comparison. What does NY produce? Oh yeah, they make debt - paper USD. Yeah, MI is dead while NY, who probably doesn't produce a 10th of what we made, isn't lying next to us in the coffin?

    Why?

    Why is it that New York seems to be doing relatively so well? How much of the value in the USD was built off the back of my State's productivity? Yet WE go cap in hand to the government begging for a puny bailout? A pathetic bit of money which is just printed off at the Fed in New York? You have got to be kidding me. We probably were one of the only sources of real value TO that USD. And yet these Banks in New York were given over 7 TRILLION dollars. What do they make that's worth that much money? Oh yeah, nothing.

    Ever wondered why great Empires collapse? It's because the people who work, realize it's not worth being in the Empire any longer. MI could have left the Union decades ago and been better off for it. It's just people are too scared of real change. They're too scared to even print their own currency. Which is why they'll forever and a day whine about the rich, elect the people who promise them the most bullshit, and live in their tiny little stall wondering why nothing ever changes and in the end, be sent off as cannon fodder to die in a trench for the Good of the Nation.

    That's the cycle anyway. We're about half way through act 2.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2012
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,862
    Think of the census as a sweepstakes worth up to $500 billion per year.

    In advance of the 2010 Census, a new report by the Brookings Institution points to just how much federal aid is resting on the results. The report finds that federal dollars are channeled into states not so much on the basis of politics as on information about the size of each state's rural and poor populations -- data that's collected in the country's decennial census.

    In an analysis of fiscal year 2008 funds, the study found that 31 percent of federal assistance -- $446.7 billion -- was distributed using census population and income data as a guide. Medicaid funding, for example, is allocated to states based on the size of their poor populations (and their Medicaid income limits.)



    New York, which ranked fourth in per capita funding, received $44,849,837,749 in federal assistance -- $2,301.14 per capita.


    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...8u2RAQ&usg=AFQjCNFtfueX7WRziZLRdKoHvFbCbyHJSQ


    So there's one way it made money.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    Apparently you are not aware of the current manufacturing Renaissance now underway in the United States. I have personally seen a lot of firms who had previously outsourced work to places like India and China move operations back to The United States. Manufacturing jobs have been driving job creation in The United States for the last few years.

    The United States is no longer the high cost producer it used to be for several reasons not the least of which is the availability of low cost energy.

    http://www.smartmoney.com/invest/st...facturing-boom-1333924908638/?link=SM_hp_ls1e
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2012
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Carcano Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,865
    New York financial firms dont create wealth...they just move it around...preferably in their own general direction.

    The future is bright for US manufacturing for two reasons. The continuing decline in the value of the dollar, and the rise in value of diminishing oil supplies...which affect shipping costs.

    As Asians eventually demand higher wages and start consuming their own products instead of saving obsessively....more and more production will happen state side.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2012
  8. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Oooo I have a small headache.....

    It's not so much that jobs left our State (I mean, they're leaving Japan as well) it's more the fact that Michigandar's put in three generations of industrial kick-ass and it all evaporated literally overnight. Our labor propped up the USD, gave it value - in a sense you could say subsidized it. But, unlike Japan who were able to enjoy that wealth, ours was siphoned into big governmental make-work waste projects and gambled away in large New York financial institutes.

    I wonder: If MI had stored it's wealth in it's own, even State, currency - would MI be the husk of a shithole it is now? I recall as a child visiting places in the South of the USA and thinking, wow, these people are freaken poor.

    Is manufacturing coming back to the USA? Probably some. That's not really what I'm talking about - I'm talking about the theft of three generations of workers productivity. MI barely has the funds to open new plants and has to go cap in hand begging the New York financial institutes who print the USD out of their ass as debt - the same USD we made valuable through 80 years of labor. That's bullshit. We'd have been better off if we had just purchased gold and stored our labor there. At least now the State would have the funds to draw people to the State. AND we wouldn't have to go in debt to attract business.

    What an inane immoral crooked financial system. Let's see how much longer it lasts before States literally start voting to leave the Union.
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2012
  9. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    You would be much more convincing Michael if you could put together a cogent argument backed with evidence, real evidence and not just demagoguery. But we both know you cannot do that because you are not supported by the evidence nor reason.
     
  10. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    That was polemics in reference to "What if.....". How am I supposed to "give evidence" to what life in MI would be like if our production (you know, GM, Ford, Chrysler, etc....) had been stored in a currency separate from the USD.

    IMO the MI automotive industry WAS the American industrial revolution. WE are what backed the value in the USD. Three generations of American Michiganders. AND while fat f*cking banking pig vampire squid suck the life out of what's left of the American economy we are decimated. Detroit can call it a day - it's over. Done. Gone.

    Wax Wings Joe.... the American Empire is on it's slow decline all thanks to the insolence of a few fat crooked 1913 politician sell-outs. They'd keep good company with Bush's and Obama's of today - in Hell.
     
  11. Carcano Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,865
    Vampire squid bankers are bad enough without being blamed for the decline of American productive capacity. Its really the fault of of politicians who dont understand why free trade and monopolization is so destructive.

    The reasons are not just economic but political as well. American is now completely dependant on external production, and this diminishes national sovereignty tremendously.

    Japanese citizens pay several times the world price for Japanese rice for a very important reason...its not in the best interests of national sovereignty to be dependant on other nations for something as essential as food.

    They eat rice for breakfast too!
     
  12. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    You had the answer: "Maybe too good"

    Which led to the second answer: To start with Toyota and Datsun produced far cheaper cars that were of reasonably the same quality and cost to operate.

    Detroit did nothing, but spend money on making cars LOOK pretty.

    Toyota and Datsun and Honda produced cheaper 4 cylinder cars that were more reliable and cheaper to operate as gas prices started to climb.

    Detroit built V8 "Muscle Cars" and posted signs at the entrance to their parking lot, that if you bought a Japanese car you could go park it in Japan.

    Gas crunch hit and Detroit was caught flat footed, with big cars, attempts to make them clean and efficient just made them less reliable.

    Meanwhile Toyota, Nissan, Honda and Lexus and Acura had better looking and far more reliable cars that were more innovative, comfortable and cheaper to operate.

    But yeah, typical of Detroit to blame their problems on someone else, in this case an Ex Detroiter blames it on "Vampire Squid Bankers"

    Classic.

    Oh, and by the way, much of US automaking simply left Michigan, and new plants, being built by the Japanese and Germans aren't being built in Michigan or Detroit either.

    BMW chose NC, VW chose Tenn as did Nissan, Mercedes went with Alabama, Honda went with Alabama and Ohio, Toyota went with Kentucky and Indiana, all told, over 60,000 jobs and none of them in Michigan (and with them went all sorts of local suppliers as well).

    So MAYBE, just MAYBE, one needs to look at Michigan itself and ask, how did it manage to LOSE this huge manufacturing base?
     
  13. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Well Arthur, you are making some sense.
    I do agree, Generous Motors, thanks to some f*cked up laws in MI (where they had to pay UAW workers while they were on strike - if you can imagine that) eventually saw jobs leave to other States.

    Ironically enough, Japan does the same thing with shipping. They are not allowed to use their own docking equipment as it'd put too many Japanese out of work (although they sell it to other countries like Singapore who happily use it to out compete Malaysia on efficiency).

    Yeah, I'll agree MI made some serious f*cking mistakes - and you can think of MI as a canary in the mine.

    As You Are Now So Once Were We.
    As We Are Now, So Shall You Be.


    That said, I still think MI was f*cked though the USD. And New York is a menus AFAIAK - living off the hard work of the rest of America. I don't even consider NY a part of the US anymore TTYTT. They're more a cancer on the body politic.

    While we will never know, I wonder if we Michiganders had different currencies to store our productive wealth in, at least people like my grandfather would be more than set in his aged years. And actually he is. But, even more so. I also wonder what sort of society MI would be with this slightly different more intimate monetary feedback - honest money might have saved us from ourselves.

    Oh, I'm not from Detroit, I lived in Flint. At least at time in my life. I've seen people shot in the head, right down the street from where I rented 3 weeks before I packed up and left the USA .... years ago.
     
  14. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    And yet they were doing fine as long as they made a decent product and sold it at a fair price.

    Then they stopped doing that.

    The OTHER car plants I talked about in the US are doing quite well, and using the USD, so no Michael, you haven't shown any relation between the currency used and Detroit's problems.
     
  15. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    There is something wrong in the logic and something true to. I can not think it's a problem of free-trade. It may be a problem of society. I do agree monopolization is a problem.

    If China produces something cheaply and dumps it on our market - somehow this is bad. Why? We get something cheap. How can this be bad? If it puts Americans out of work, good, now they have free time to do something else. That makes sense. It's why we use machines to plow fields.

    There something wrong with the way we think about the economy and it's because of the way the monetary system is structured.
     
  16. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    There's multiple problems obviously the USD being one of many. Inflating the currency IS a problem if you save in that currency. Retired UAW workers will be f*cked because of it. So, that's one problem.
     
  17. Carcano Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,865
    Its bad because American wealth leaves the country instead of circulating within.

    Think of the nation as a family. Will you buy something cheaper from a stranger rather than from your son? And if your son invents a machine to make that something with less labour...does that somehow make the family poorer???
     
  18. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Inflation isn't always that big of an issue.

    My portfolio grows with inflation as well as with earnings.

    And consider, I bought my last house for $195,000 in 86 and I sold it for nearly $500,000 in 2004.

    So I had lived in a house for nearly 2 decades, raising my kids, and all around having a good time in that big house with a great kitchen, sun-room, decks, pool, hot tub and a big yard to play in, and yet when I needed to downsize, I got back more than I'd paid into the house all those years.

    So my housing cost for the last several decades was a NET positive cash flow.

    I then moved to a smaller city, with much lower housing costs, and used the proceeds to buy a great house in a historic district and a 32 ft cruiser which I keep on the nearby river.

    Net: 20 years with essentially no housing costs and at the end a neat house & boat, free and clear.

    By the way, if you wonder where all the money went in the bursting of the housing bubble, it ISN'T the banks.

    You need look no further than many millions of other's just like me who could in fact read the writing on the wall and bailed out of the overly heated housing market just before it peaked, taking huge amounts of money out of the system and in fact, helping to cause the bubble to burst.
     
  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    22,910
    Prove your case Michael with facts and reason.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2012
  20. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    I do agree MI cooked it's own goose. But, that doesn't mean New York Bankers didn't profit from our labor and productivity simply by tying it to the USD which they could use the value therein to buy assets. And get this, those assets were in China. Which was used to undercut the productive manufacturing class in the USA.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  21. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    OK, think about the sugar thought experiment.

    Is free sugar bad?

    Why is it bad to get cheap things?

    What do we mean by "wealth" leaving the Nation? When someone in Japan spends 500 hours making a silk kimono and sells it to you for $20,000 has wealth "left" the Nation? What if he sells it to you for $200, has wealth left the nation?

    What is "wealth"?

    If a Japanese makes a car and sells it to you and you buy it for cheap and now you don't have to make a car and can instead make a nice hat. You have both a car and a hat. When you HAVE to make your own car. You only have a car.

    The monetary system is flawed. It makes people THINK the opposite of what is reality. Debt becomes money. Wealth is having less? LESS?!?! Less free time? Less items of desirability? Wealth is HAVING to work and leisure time is bad!?! What kind of nonsense is that?

    This is wrong - there is an illogical inconsistency here isn't there?

    Money is not debt.
    Wealth is having more that is desired (items, time, health).
    Working is unfortunate at best - a chore
    Leisure is good - and if that includes your "work" then work is not a chore but a leisure activity, a choice.


    IMO the monetary system is flawed.

    If we had competing currency, your wealth would not leave your nation. Your currency account may leave. But, your wealth would increase as your items that were desired were acquired, time was spent in leisure and health was better.

    What do you think?
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2012
  22. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    'The Great Dictator'

    100 hundred years and still the same problems - even worse! We tried Liberalism, but, it didn't work. Chaplin wrote this himself. He and I and you and Joe and Arthur, even Asguard, we all want the same thing.

    Logical and Reason.
    Based on a system of ethics; we can have consistent morality.

    We can't steal from peter to pay paul. That has led to an immoral decayed society let around by the nose into and out of war. Mark my words, they LOVE the war on Terror.

    I note Chaplin's use of the word Cattle. I wonder if he, as a Liberal, were alive today, if he'd think of Libertarian philosophy and economic reasoning as a more just and moral system? Seeing how Liberal ideologues destroyed our society. Watching as so-called ChickenHawk conservatives send us to fight and die in trenches. Witnessing the rise of WallStreet and death of Democracy. Would he find our form of Oligarchic Fascism repugnant? Hell, even the Liberal rise and cheer when the POTUS assassinated citizens. When agencies like the TSA anal probe citizens while the FDA happily looks the other way as pesticides and plastic hardeners accumulate in our food supply.


    The great rise and fall of nations....
     
  23. Carcano Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,865
    This is thinking concerned only with a particular individual and his gains or loses...as opposed to the nation's gains and loses.

    Its bad for THE NATION to get cheap things if its citizens dont buy those cheap things from other citizens of that nation.

    One consumer's loss is a producer's gain...and as long as that producer is domestic the nation as a whole loses none of its wealth to foreign countries.
     

Share This Page