How can we remain globally competitive with Chinese slave wage workers earning 50 cents an hour working 12 hour shifts six days a week? The real enemy isn't us or our government. The real enemy is Communist style capitalism.

I agree wholeheartedly with the author. The enemy is U.S., both the populi and the gubmint. The elected officials are continually bribed by upwards of 40,000 lobbyist and the electorate, by and large appear to be a bunch of brats screaming: "but I want it NOW!!!" (shades of Willy Wonka!).

I agree completely with the above poster. We only think short-term and use a band-aid when surgery is needed.

...And possibly, in some cases, the economy it deserves too. America's national cult is one of convenience and instant gratification. The ultimate physical driver of all this has been cheap oil. But there has been a very powerful abstract driver as well: culture. We are (as a whole) arrogant, lazy, obtuse, and have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. The first commenter perfectly illustrates your point about blaming others rather than looking in the mirror. It's always someone else's fault; someone else should be cleaning up the mess we made. Our founding fathers and mothers would be ashamed of what we've done with their vision and their sacrifices. Heck, even our great-grandparents would probably feel the same.

While I mostly agree with Cathy, I'm not entirely sure that investing in the shell game that is our stock market is the right way to go right now. I'm more interested in "investing" by 1. lowering my debt (just mortgage for me), 2. learning real skills that will support some quality of life if the whole house of cards comes tumbling down in my lifetime, (which, by the way, I consider likely,) and 3. getting fruit and nut trees and perennial vegetables planted now so that they'll be producing a few years down the road.

I never thought I'd see eye to eye with survivalists of any stripe. I suppose the end of the petroleum era is forcing many of us to reconsider many aspects of our lives. As well it should.

The "mortgage crisis" and resulting economic downturn is another clear indication to those of in the US that the party is over. No longer can our citizens and governments continue to mortgage the future of our children and grandchildren.

The article and this post are right to the point. Most of us simply can't afford those mcmansions and hummers, both that clog our streets. We need to live way within our means, and take more time to smell the roses.

Please keep up the good work. It's important for our future.

I agree with Cathy 100%. Just as we have to make choices with our personal budget--- many times it means not buying or doing what we want but what we must do --- we have to do the same with the national budget. I consider myself a progressive, so I would like to see programs that (i) help the disinfranchised, (ii) are environmentally "green", and (iii) invest heavily in education. If everyone, and I mean everyone, including corporations, paid their fair share of the tax burden we could not only have a balanced budget but also improve everyone's standard of living.

We, Americans, can accomplish anything we truly want.

This article reminders me of why I supported Ron Paul. This governement spends way too much and can print it's own money out of thin air. If only we would cut spending across the board (including on nation building John McCain), we would be on the road to recovery.

There's seems to be a bit of confusion about what I meant in my previous post. When I was speaking of "investing" instead of spending, I wasn't particularly speaking chunking money into the stock market.

I meant that we need to invest in our schools, our communities, in reducing both personal and governmental debt, and especially, as a nation, in finding alternate ways to fuel our country. For the last decade, we've been giving tentative subsidies to alternative energy start up companies, then yanking those at the worst possible moment to instead provide tax breaks and subsidies to the oil companies. This is insane. Why would anyone take the risk, knowing that they are competing with huge, established companies with the added advantage of all the tax breaks and subsidies our current administration can bully Congress into providing?

We need, all of us, to cut debt. We need to quit expecting our schools to raise our children and instead help them teach our children, or we will lose out to China and India in the race to create new technologies. We need to get out of this mistaken, incompetently run war in Iraq that has chewed our armed forces to pieces and put us in hock to the Chinese. We need to grit our teeth, roll up our sleeves, quit complaining and start making the sacrifices needed.

As for the "tax" story submitted by Guest, it's exactly the kind of simplistic silly propaganda that the "haves" always use to squelch the protests of the "have nots." Please, give us actual facts, not "10 guys in a beer hall" anecdotes. Trickle down economics? Think about it; 90% of the citizenry get a trickle, 10% get a lake! Money spent is money spent and will stimulate the economy, whether it's a multi-millionaire buying his third vacation home or a thousand sets of parents buying shoes for their kids. The idea that cutting taxes for the rich is the perfect way to keep our economy strong is insane. I'm with Warren Buffet; it makes no sense at all that his tax rate is less than that of his $60,000 a year secretary.

And "Guest"....

I sign my name.
Cathyrn Sykes
www.moneytospare.net

Although Americans consume -way- too much and must bear some responsibility for woes they are experiencing within their own four walls (such as credit card debt), laying the entire blame for the current economic crisis at their feet is like blaming a cancer victim for getting sick. Although cancer victims may contribute to getting sick (too much fatty food, too little exercise, poor genetics, etc.), what this forum is doing is overlooking how much of the disease is being caused by the chemical factory illegally dumping toxins into the drinking water supply while the local water department agent takes bribes to fudge the weekly safety test. The cancer victim pays his taxes and expects the water agent to do his job, but the agent serves another master.

I am a family law attorney (and a tightwad) who spends every day examining and litigating the finances of middle-class couples in financial trouble. Most marriages fail due to financial pressure. A decade ago, it was usually the immature, the selfish, and the foolish who came through my door and I would thwack them over the head and hand them a copy of the "Tightwad Gazette." Today, however, the overwhelming majority of clients are hardworking, fiscally responsible middle class people who can't make ends meet because the deck is stacked against them every step of the way. Most don't have a lot of debt or excessive lifestyles (even by my boil-the-bones/shop at thrift shops standards), they simply don't have enough money left over after paying the hefty mortgage on their modest 3-bedroom ranches, daycare, medical insurance and taxes to buy food or energy. Now, I pulled myself up from poverty by my bootstraps two decades ago through hard work, frugality, and education, so what's changed? Why are so many financially responsible people simply not making it?

Curious, I picked up my husbands MBA books which quote lots of erudite economists and legal precedents in support of free trade/low tax/pro business polices. Now, I'm no economist (though I minored in business as an undergrad, took 4 semesters of accounting, and originally studied to be a corporate lawyer), but I've extensively studied Constutitional law and international business law. I quickly realized 90% of the legal precedent/pro-founding-fathers crap being fed to MBA students is false. Bogus, not true, quoted out of context and often an out-right lie. Curious as to what else is not true I followed quotes given in support of free trade back to the sources (such as incomplete quotes from books used to justify free-trade such as "The World is Flat" which really promotes investment in education, not unfettered outsourcing), back to a secondary source which originates from a pro-business think tank in Chicago in the 1980's. These secondary sources deviate DRASTICALLY from the economic giants whose theories guided the US economy up until the 1980s, such as Adam Smith and Alexandar Hamilton. Don't believe me? Go to the source and read it for yourself...

Beginning with Ronald Reagan in 1980, things changed. Reagan came in, canceled promising alternative energy grants started by Carter (oil companies bought the patents for pennies on the dollar), and used the threat of those technologies to cut an unholy alliance with Saudi Arabia to artificially reduce energy prices (you have to remember that back then, we were the only real consumer of any significance of oil). We won the arms rice against Russia in large part because, deprived of their main source of revenue (natural gas-Gazprom), they had no manufacturing base of their own to support the arms race (sound like the US today?). Over the next 8 years Reagan gutted consumer protection laws fought for by Consumers Union and Public Citizen, practically eliminated meaningful oversight by the EPA, FDA, USDA, etc., reduced IRS auditing of corporations in favor of auditing average middle-class Americans earning less than $30,000 per year, and practically eliminated restrictions on who controlled media outlets and gutted oversight by the FCC. He also loosed control of lobbiest access to Congress. Today, fewer than 8 media conglomerates control 99% of what the average person learns about and who is their biggest advertiser controls what news you learn about. The media, 1st Amendment watchdog of the founding fathers, is owned by corporate America.

Clinton professed to represent the middle, but he worsened the situation by eliminating lending restrictions on banks (source of the current mortgage crisis), instituting so-called "welfare reform" which, though needed, went too far, approved free trade agreements giving multinational corporations unfettered access to our markets, enacted laws which allowed these corporations to shift their earnings overseas to avoid paying taxes, further gutted consumer protection laws, and passed pro-corporate bankruptcy laws. As for Bush, I know you all have his number so I won't mention him, but on September 12th he told Americans they could fight terrorism by going to the mall.

Fed a steady diet of corporate-controlled advertising which manipulates quirks of the human brain (read Jerry Mander's "4 Arguments for the Elimination of Telivision) to increase consumer spending and pro-corporate news, is it any wonder the average American is a mess? Sure, they're stupid for continuing to stare at the boob-tube and not noticing that they get the urge to order out a pizza after the TV ad, but hey, most people just don't have as high IQ's as the average tightwad (read "The Bell Curve"), especially as many of todays consumers are from the post-Reagan/cut-education-to-the-bone generation. It's not that the more aware people aren't writing to their Congressman demanding solutions, the problem is that those Congressmen aren't listening because they're beholden to their corporate sponsors.

STOP telling people they're stupid and it's all their own fault. A) it's only 25%-30% their fault; B) the minute you tell someone it's all their fault they stop listening to you; and C), the orginator of this article is quoting a non-credible source. If you want to change things, take clueless consumers by the hand, gently explain the situation to them and what they can do to fix it in a non-blaming way, then unleash them on Congress to throw the bastards out of office. Educate people that they have been brainwashed and teach them there is another way to live. You can be the smartest, holiest hermit in your cave on the mountaintop, but if you don't come down and mingle with the masses once in a while to set a good example, you're useless. Jesus didn't preach from heaven, he came down to earth and preached to PEOPLE.

I'm with Anna. What a shame. My wife and I live FRUGALLY. We bought a house as a tax relief and an investment. This investment was made with cautious lending statigies based on fixed interest loans; the same as many of our fellow homeowners. So I'm not real hep on hearing how we screwed up. I can only control my household. I cannot control our corporations or govermental leaders from running our economy into the ditch and forcing good people to take lower paying jobs. I'd really like to reap the benefits of our investment someday as I am sure all of us would. We all better vote!

Kiplingers is owned by one of those "8 media conglomerates" mentioned in my last post which have become mouthpieces for large corporations. They are "credible" on economic issues only in the sense that they are "credible" for furthering the big business/free trade/low corporate taxes/Chicago school view of economics. If you happen to represent (or be heavily invested in) big corporations, then Kiplingers reinforces your world view. If you are not part of that 10% elite, then that world view ignores the other side of the story (you know, the one where the less privileged 90% have had their standard of living knocked back to the stone age).

When weighing ANY source of information, you have to ask yourself "what is the agenda of this source?" EVERYBODY has an agenda. Jesus had an agenda (opposition to the excesses of Rome). The question then becomes "in light of this agenda, can this source be considered credible to a reasonably prudent man?" The reasonably prudent man lives at the 50% mark of society, middle class, hard working, 3-bedroom ranch, 2 cars, a modest IRA, and 2.4 children. If you are a reasonably prudent man, Kiplingers is not credible because you are part of that 90% left behind in the past 2 decades.

As for claiming I'm "blaming somebody else for my problems," I don't really have any. I'm in the 10% doing fine and scan green/frugal living columns to get ideas for the town alternative energy board I serve on. We go into senior centers and schools to promote "green" living and people adopt "green" when it saves them money. "Green/frugal" helps me remember my modest roots so I can relate to my clients and resist the urge to consume. It's not fair that, if I die tomorrow, my kids won't have the same economic opportunities that I had 20 years ago. We're also one incident away from the food and energy shortages that brought the Soviet Union to it's knees in the late 1980's (read "The Coming Economic Collapse"). I don't need cheap towels from Walmart. I need to feel secure that if something happens to me, my kids can still live the American dream. That's my "agenda." As for resentment against the legal profession, everybody is welcome to their opinion, but I do clearly recall this forum has a "no personal attacks" policy.

It was very blunt, which is why I think that it got so much of a reaction, but it also states some great truths. I don't, however, think that all the things that got our country into this situation are bad- it's economics that there will be up and down turns. Just stay the course and it will go up again.

-Suz

A trust betrayed? Gone for veterans are the check and balances within and between our branches of government that so many have died for! Please hold your U.S. House and Senate members responsible. Thank you.

In 1994 the Chief Judge of Congress’s 1988 established Court of Veterans Appeals stated that the, "Constitution, Statutes and Regulations" are "policy freely ignored" by both "The Veterans Health Administration" (VHA) and the Secretary of the DVA, i.e., the "STATE OF COURT" transcript PARAGRAPH 9 with Congress’s law of the land U.S. CODE, TITLE 38, SECTIONS (§) 511 and § 7252. Decisions of the Secretary; finality; REFERENCES [1], [2] & [3]. This is a no teeth Congressional LEGISLATIVE Court that captures veterans within the Executive Branch’s Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA). Lost is a before military service right to a with teeth, independent from Congress and the DVA, Judicial Branch Court.[2] Fifteen (15) years after the Chief Judge's statements the Secretary of the DVA and his laymen "initial adjudicators" still are not held responsible for their "freely ignored" and medically brainless "Schedule of Ratings for Disabilities" decisions.

A couple of examples of the "initial adjudicators" to date "freely ignored" are this veterans 1957 DVA Physician’s resultant USAF Physician's, "MPerR PERMANENT" "SURGEON HQ ARRC JUN 25 ‘58 MEDICALLY DISQUALIFIED FOR MILITARY SERVICE" of from 1952 to 1956! Then the layman adjudicator’s brainless 6/27/96 Supplemental Statement Of Case (SSOC) no "...competent medical evidence...". After an ongoing 19 years in the DVA administrative process the veteran receives a 100% disability. To date there is still no recognition of the 1957 DVA physician resultant 1958 USAF physician "disqualified"!

REFERENCES (Emphasis added throughout) with comments:

[1] "STATE OF COURT, CHIEF JUDGE FRANK Q. NEBEKER, STATE OF THE COURT, FOR PRESENTATION TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF VETERANS APPEALS THIRD JUDICIAL CONFERENCE, OCTOBER 17-18, 1994 {as it appears in Veterans Appeals Reporter}"

--------------------PARAGRAPH 9 of 16 in "STATE OF COURT" TRANSCRIPT records DVA laymen ignoring medical opinion without veteran recourse.-----------------------------

"I believe my message is clear. There is, I suggest, no system with judicial review which has within it a component part free to function in its own way, in its own time and with one message to those it disappoints -- take an appeal. That is, I am afraid, what we have today in many of the Department's Agencies of Original Jurisdiction -- that is AOJs -- around the country. Neither the Court, through the Board, the Board, nor the General Counsel has direct and meaningful control over the Agencies of Original Jurisdiction. Indeed, it is also clear that the VHA -- the Veterans Health Administration -- ignores specific directives to provide medical opinions as directed. And this is resulting in unconscionable delays. Let us examine judicial review. Remember, the Court and the Board do not make policy, the Secretary and Congress do. The Court simply identifies error made below by a failure to adhere, in individual cases, to the Constitution, statutes, and regulations which themselves reflect policy -- policy freely ignored by many initial adjudicators whose attitude is, "I haven't been told by my boss to change. If you don't like it -- appeal it." The complete 16 paragraph "STATE OF COURT" transcript is available on request. Previously at, and now missing from the Chief Judges and state_of_court sites: www.goodnet.com/~heads/nebeker and www.firebase.net/state_of_court_brief.htm

The top medically ignorant "boss" is Congress’s confirmed "Secretary" of the DVA.

AND THE CONGRESS’S "policy freely ignored" UNITED STATES CODE law of the land, take away from Veterans:

[2] UNITED STATES CODE, TITLE 38 > PART I > CHAPTER 5 > SUBCHAPTER I >
§ 511. Decisions of the Secretary; finality
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usc...11----000-.html

"(a) The Secretary shall decide all questions of law and fact necessary to a decision by the Secretary under a law that affects the provision of benefits by the Secretary to veterans or the dependents or survivors of veterans. Subject to subsection (b), THE DECISION OF THE SECRETARY AS TO ANY SUCH QUESTION SHALL BE FINAL AND CONCLUSIVE AND MAY NOT BE REVIEWED BY ANY OTHER OFFICIAL OR BY ANY COURT, whether by an action in the nature of mandamus or otherwise."

THEREFORE, NO COURT REVIEW OF THE MEDICALLY UNTRAINED DVA laymen and "Secretary" "schedule of ratings for disabilities" decisions as proven by:

[3] UNITED STATES CODE, TITLE 38 PART V > CHAPTER 72 > SUBCHAPTER I >
§ 7252. Jurisdiction; finality of decisions

"(b) Review in the Court shall be on the record of proceedings before the Secretary and the Board. The extent of the review shall be limited to the scope provided in section 7261 of this title. THE COURT MAY NOT REVIEW THE SCHEDULE OF RATINGS FOR DISABILITIES adopted under section 1155 of this title or any action of the Secretary in adopting or revising that schedule."