Dan J

More war. And Iran is probably next. This guy is far worse than Bush ever was. He said he would end the wars.

Assisting a government in capturing a terrorist leader is far from a war.

Why would anyone go to College or learn a trade if they could get well paid for something right out of high school?

We probably have a different idea of well paid. Increasing wages even 5-10% would push more people in to tax paying brackets and less reliant on government assistance. Although its a bit more complicated than that since doing so across the board would have an inflationary effect.

But on the other hand, the only trades that are keeping strong wages are either those that are high skilled/high demand or have a strong union presence. There are many people people going to collage and getting out and having a hard time finding a job that pays more than $30k a year.

Why would you pay them more than they are worth?

If you look at a microeconomic scale, you are right, there is no reason to pay someone more than they are worth.

But if you look at a larger macroeconomic scale, paying someone really low wages often costs the government much more than that person will ever pay in taxes. The business owner is indirectly making up the wage difference for that worker through the less efficient tax system.

How do you tax someone that has no money?

We have a poverty problem. Not a tax problem.

That's true. The simplest way to get people to pay more in taxes is pay them more. I wonder how much the average worker was paid at Godfather's Pizza when Herman Cain was CEO.

America's oil and natural gas industry supports 9.2 million men and women across the United States in a wide range of highly skilled, well-paying professions. In fact, oil and natural gas industry exploration and production wages are more than double the national average. An analysis of API's public data, independent research and corporate annual reports finds that the industry distributed $176 billion in wages paid to U.S. employees, plus benefits and payments to oil and natural gas leaseholders.

http://energytomorrow.org/job-creation?gclid=CIbh4ISzu6sCFYdrKgodljyvfg#/type/all

Dimwits are trying their best to destroy these jobs .

9.2 million? That must include all the people who work at gas stations and car manufactures. There is no way that oil and gas production directly employs 9.2 million people.

Even if we move away from oil/gas production, which we will need to over the long term, most of those jobs would continue to exist. The rest would just shift to other sectors.

Private/public companies don't create jobs. They are in the business of making money. Jobs are a function on achieving that goal. But if that goal can be achieved through automation, financial markets, or other cost cutting measures, you can bet most companies will choose that over creating jobs.

So far. Dems will not vote for a woman so we won't see one over there. Notice that she draws all the fire, along with Sarah who isn't even running at all and is basically unemployed. Dems hate women. Clearly.

That is obviously the reason why Obama was chosen over Hillary.

Oh please. If it's offered, it's not a poll tax. Get ahold of yourself.

If people paid attention to policies/their government they would know there was a free one. There's nothing stopping people from running ads in news papers, online, etc. advertising the fact.

The free ID is meant for the poor anyway, or those who don't want a regular state ID/driver's license.

The government has no business in actively discouraging people from taking the free ID. If anything it should be clearly informing everyone of their options.

Wisconsin laws do allow for a free ID, however, the Governor basically told all the state offices not to offer the free ID, unless the person asks for it.

So Wisconsin GOP basically put in place a poll tax to keep out the people that might vote for their opponents. So much for protecting the Constitution.

Pennsylvania for the most part is a mini model of the US. Population centers on East and West ends, dominated by minorities, unions and Democrats. The middle of the state is more rural, religious and conservative.

As for the idea anything that produces a more representative reflection of the actual votes by county, I am in favor of.

There's 67 counties in PA. Obama only won 18 of the 67 counties here in PA. I think Obama won the state by 5-600k votes, which can be attributed to his margin of victory in Philadelphia of 400k votes.

But its still sort of a winner takes all system, on a much smaller scale.

All you have to do is arrange the districts so that the opposing party is concentrated in a few districts as possible, then spread out your districts do you have just enough of a majority to win them. The popular vote could one way, and the electoral votes the other.

The food and energy costs is what is maybe the most harmful of inflationary impacts to the consumer. They are the ones that seem to increase the most to us regular consumers. They are usually the staples hat we tend to have to pay for no matter how much more they cost. It is these things we will look at buying and the mortgage to be put on the back burner.

There are things a person can do to optimize energy costs such as living in a smaller house, living in a city, living closer to work, and conserving energy. But often times choose not to do so and are affected much more by fluctuations in energy costs.

Never said it was that high of inflation. Most realize this but it bears repeating though. The inflation rate is an average of all prices. Most realize that basic stuff is the prices that will be hitting the consumers. These prices are what the consumers need to just survive. Since these are now eating into the wages then other discretionary spending lessens and that creates less demand and thus depressed employment.

Not exactly.

Its the rate of change in the consumer price index. It does not include all products.

Food and Energy are often volatile (Natural/Geopoltical factors) and are excluded from the core rate of inflation.

And Unions usually eventually price themselves and their companies out of the market and thus loss of jobs have occurred.

Unions wont solve all problems like automation. There have also been unions that have gotten concessions from companies that the company couldn't follow through on (Although it takes both sides to make an agreement). But what other tool does an average worker have?

If it were that easy than you would be right. I also remember during Carter that the only tools the Federal reserve had to combat the runaway inflation was to raise interest rates and restrict the money supply. That meant the ones who were having such a hard time servicing their debt started to go under as they could not pay their mortgages and pay their bills. (It led to the savings and loans crisis) It was possible for some to refinance their mortgages and tap into that increased property valuation. (It actually takes up to two years for the higher appreciations to do this) The new loans were going for up to 15% to 20% though. It saved them for awhile but then they had to start paying a lot more on their mortgages along with the inflationary bills. Soon the extra money was gone and they were left paying the higher mortgages with their pay. Many lost their azzes. Very few could get loans anyway also to buy a house or just didn't want to pay the high interest rates so housing slumped big time. Thus we had a lot of unemployment start in that industry and any industry that was attached to that.

Like I said it was brutal time for everyone and it is hard to see that some would like to revisit that time. Also it is a lie that wages kept up with the inflation. NO RECEIVED 30% RAISES evey 3 months. No one received that in a year.

Inflation during that time was not 30% per quarter, more like 10-13% per year. High, but not crazy high. There have been years where the inflation rate was even higher.

What difference does it make if the real estate appreciates? The payments are still there but harder to pay as your pay is now being stretched to pay more for everything due to inflation.

The ideal is no inflation to the common people.

I've seen my wages increase 10%+ each year much more than inflation. But then i'm not working a low skilled manufacturing/service job. The only way low skilled workers can actually put wage pressure on employers is by unionizing. A single person is too easy to replace. Inflation is going to be around no matter what. Since employers are not interested in paying employees more, what are the workers going to do about it?

Not really. Most poor people have shite credit.

How in the hell do you expect someone to pay something off when they can't afford to put dinner on the table because prices have gone through the roof?

Inflation should mean increases in wages along with prices, but at least with low to middle end jobs, competition, automation and globalization have kept wages low.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, America SHOULD NOT be afraid of deflation.

Inflation is not an 'increase' in prices. It's a decrease in the value of currency. People don't seem to understand this and cannot grasp the concept at all. Deflation is an increase in the value of currency.

In other words, with deflation, your dollar has more buying power. During inflation it has less buying power.

I never get why no one truly understands the concept and how it works. The argument always revolves around the debt. I'll tell you what, if the FED were to reign in cash, make the dollar worth something again, then maybe we'd actually stand a chance to pay off the debt with the right spending cuts/possible tax increases in certain areas.

The only reason why we are still standing at all as a nation today, is because we are the world's reserve currency. If the dollar was not the reserve currency with the current way our dollar is being treated, the dollar would have fallen long ago and America would be in a heap of trouble.

Inflation encourages investment, if the value of your money is decreasing, you need to invest it keep or increase your the relative value of your money.

Deflation discourages investment. Why risk your money if you will gain value by holding it.

Granted, but which Founding Father was it who observed (paraphrased) that, "When the people learn that they can vote themselves money, the country's in deep manure"?

The quote is "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic" While its often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, there is no proof that he actually wrote or said it. It could be a case of "in the absence of proof it must be true"

They're Republicans and they're acting like it. If only Democrats had this kind of message discipline.

So are you saying that democrats should purge anyone who might be moderate?

There are a couple of gay fellows at my work, but you would never know they were gay unless they flat out told you. They would make it in the military for sure, but they would end up getting their arsses kicked by everyone else. I just don't think the military society is ready for that. Maybe in a hundred years, but not now.

Yes there are still bigots in the Military, just like civilian life. But that doesn't mean such behavior should be condoned. The Military has means to deal with soldiers harassing or attacking fellow soldiers.

Unlike the federal government, state and local governments actually have to balance their books.

Spending cuts are possible after all! Too bad the boys in Washington haven't figured it out.

Federal government is growing. State and local governments are being fiscally responsible.

This is true, however balancing under Republican controlled states usually looks like this:

1. Use one time federal money (Pass the problem to the next budget cycle)

2. Use accounting tricks (Pass the problem to the next budget cycle)

3. Cut aid to local governments (Force cities/counties to raise property taxes)

The Republican strategy is often less about cutting spending, and more about passing the problem to someone else to deal with.

How much did all that add to the unemployment rate?

They don't owe you any jobs.

Of course not, then they can pay higher taxes.

So do the rich. You want to raise their taxes, raise everyone's taxes.

I the the tax rates/brackets should be responsive to economic growth and changing wealth distribution. If the wealthy get wealthier but no one else does, then their taxes go up, but no other tax brackets do. If the wealth distribution moves down, the wealthy max see tax cuts while everyone gets tax increases.

That would be a way to incentivize the wealthy to create jobs using taxes. Cutting taxes on the wealthy and then hope they take the extra money to create jobs is like giving a child allowance and then hopping they do their chores.

I thought that the legislation that was passed was passed over the protests of the tea-party. If this downgrade resulted after this legislation (either because of or inspite of it), how can you blame the tea party for the downgrade?

The plan didn't go far enough, mostly because of the opposition of the Tea Party to tax increases. If the plan went further, included tax increases, we probably would have avoided the downgrade.