

Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover - known
http://www.businessinsider.com/20-reasons-why-the-us-economy-is-dying-and-is-simply-not-going-to-recover-2010-2#the-second-wave-of-foreclosures-1

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potatolicious
> _"For decades, our leaders in Washington pushed us towards "a global
> economy" and told us it would be so good for us. But there is a flip side.
> Now workers in the U.S. must compete with workers all over the world, and
> our greedy corporations are free to pursue the cheapest labor available
> anywhere on the globe."_

Bias much? For one thing, outsourcing would've happened whether we liked it or
not. For another, having worked in manufacturing for a bit, corporations by
and large aren't laughing their way to the bank by outsourcing American
manufacturing jobs overseas - the cost of their goods drop proportionally with
labour savings, in the mid-to-long haul anyhow.

I like how we're blaming this on everyone but ourselves - the outsourcing of
manufacturing to cheap nations has allowed us to develop a rampant, disgusting
consumer culture that has an almost fetishist obsession with cheap, shoddy
goods. _WE_ did that to ourselves. Believe me, if there was any significant
demand in this country for expensive, well-made products we can bring a great
number of manufacturing jobs back... but I suspect the Wal-Mart mentality is
here to stay, and there's no one to blame for this but ourselves.

~~~
necrecious
This is a common myth. US is still the largest manufacturer in the world.

[http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/...](http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CompanyFocus/the-
myth-of-us-industrys-demise.aspx)

~~~
anigbrowl
By volume, yes, but perhaps that's not the best metric. See
[http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?sto...](http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15641021)
for a more meaningful comparison, although I agree that rumors of the
manufacturing sector's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

~~~
enjo
I'm having trouble finding the chart, but we're also the largest in terms of
percentage of GDP. That's a measurement I strongly prefer.

~~~
mpf62
According to CIA World Factbook, you're not the largest in terms of percentage
of GDP. At least Germany, Japan, Italy and even Switzerland rank better in
that metric.

All of these single-metric comparisons are flawed. E.g. the world largest
manufacturer? In comparison to what? Germany, a country with a labor force
that is over 3 times smaller than the labor force in the US?

<https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/>

------
anigbrowl
Trite self-contradictory chicken-little-ism. Corporations are greedy!
Globalization is bad! OMG socializm! Will you LOOK at that debt (notice how it
flattens in the 1990s and then goes stratospheric starting in 200)?! But it's
all the Democrats' fault (even though we had a GOP White house, House, and
Senate from 2000-2006)!

Normally I'd do a more substantive rebuttal, but after looking at the front
page of businessinsider.com, it seems pretty plain that it's the investment
equivalent of a supermarket tabloid. Although the article touches on many real
economic problems it does so in a very shallow fashion, tossing worst-case
scenarios together almost at random.

~~~
fnid2
Really? One of the forbes links says this:

    
    
      based on credit default swap spreads there is a 3.1% 
      chance of a U.S. default in the next five years, 
      according to CMA, a London credit information specialist

[http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/20/united-states-
debt-10-busin...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/20/united-states-
debt-10-business-wall-street-united-states-debt.html?feed=rss_popstories)

That's pretty bad. Also, I didn't notice any contradictions. Maybe your
hyperbolic remarks are true. Maybe Corporations are greedy -- they do have a
fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder wealth. Maybe Globalism is
bad -- think global act local right? Globalization is the opposite of that!
Also, I think the article said it was pretty much the _leaders_ fault, what
with a pic of GWB on one of the pages, or did you read that one?

 _it seems pretty plain that it's the investment equivalent of a supermarket
tabloid_

Is that ad hominem? Which statements the article includes aren't true?

~~~
anigbrowl
There's a reason I qualified and contextualized my opinion. I did not allege
falsehood but rather complained of shallow and incoherent presentation.

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dsplittgerber
I detest this new format of business "articles" which basically just tries to
bait you into loading as many pages as possible (for ad revenue) whilst
engaging in the cheapest link bait possible - 20 reasons why the U.S. economy
is dying? Seriously? Why not 10, 50? It's tabloid-worthy, basically.

Every good graph I have already seen elsewhere and with much better
explanation. They basically lump together every statistic they can get their
hands on and spin it into a story, without any stringent analysis.

Please, read good reporting by The Economist, or articles linked on
realclearmarkets.com or any kind of financial blog. The real experts on
finance and economics are not to be found among any major off- or online
publication anymore.

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joe_the_user
_"The United States of America is very quickly becoming a socialist welfare
state."_

The mindless stretching of the term socialism is getting a bit grating, you
think?

~~~
fnid2
I think semantic arguments are getting old. You took one sentence off one
slide out of 21 and have devalued the conversation to a complaint about the
use of a word.

Do you have something substantive to say or some facts to dispute what the
article said?

~~~
joe_the_user
You can scan my profile to see the substance of my posts in general.

Whatever you may think of it, my "small" distinction post here has gotten a
lot more karma than the long analyses I usually post.

The slide show altogether had little substance; a few interesting statistics,
some standard rhetoric and a come-on for a product.

Still, the craven misuse of the term "socialist" is doing more than a little
damage to the body politic. If Obama _was_ a socialist trying to change the
nature of American society, that _would_ worth debating. But he isn't, so the
repetition of such a claim works according to the "big lie principle"
(ironically articulated by Joseph Stalin) - if you take a simple falsehood,
even one the most informed people know is false, and repeat it enough times,
you get can serious traction. This method of operating is worth noting and so
_this_ "semantic" distinction _is_ important to make.

------
necrecious
Hmm, I think I detect a little anti-Obama bias.

~~~
daniel02216
It's definitely biased, some of those charts are extremely misleading,
especially the later ones. I like the one which shows when Democrats take
control of Congress.

~~~
fnid2
How are they misleading? The chart on 19 was from the Federal Reserve. Are the
number wrong?

I don't really think there is much difference between republicans and
democrats, so I don't really care which party is to blame, they are all the
ruling class and make decisions to benefit those by whom they are surrounded
-- I don't blame them for it. All human beings make decisions the same way.

But still I don't see how they are misleading. Is there something factually
wrong with them?

------
csomar
Conclusion

"When a nation practices evil, there is no way that it is going to be blessed
in the long run."

~~~
WorkerBee
Yep, that's the point where the alarmist and biased article descends into
superstitious doom-mongering. It's a pity, the topic deserves a better
treatment than this. How about submitting a better link to replace it?

