ShcShc11

uhhh.. FROM the "CIA-The world Factbook" GDP (official exchange rate): $1.759 trillion (2011 est.) Exports: $450.6 billion (2011 est.) More like 74%. However when eliminate those items that are non productive the number falls considerably. Conversely a corporation only counts its marketable efforts on its balance sheets. Clean toilets and salted parking lots are not considered part of most companies' "product," but they are considered part of the country's. 1) The 80% estimate is from the official CBO estimates and re-used by other newspapers including the NYT and WSJ 2) "Conversely a corporation only counts its marketable efforts on its balance sheets. Clean toilets and salted parking lots are not considered part of most companies' "product," but they are considered part of the country's" Ok and? The official numbers aren't derived solely on tangible products from the B/S. Assets are not the only thing counted and in fact, what would be more relevant would be the I/S (Income Statement). A PPE (let's say building) bought 50 years ago will still show in the B/S but be completely irrelevant to our statistics. I/S will show your clean toilets in the form of labour expense. Your contention of "the number would fall considerably" based on stats of the B/S seems to put you in lala fantasy/crazy land lol. Oh and btw, if it helps the search, try to find companies that sells 30% of its products to its own workers. Cheers! Shc

Yes exactly! :) A country is not a business and should not be run like one. It puzzles me that people keep wanting to "slash debt" as if the country is anything like a business. No business sells 80-85% of its products to its own workers. Cheers! Shc No, my point is that your comparison is totally irrelvant; as in - it does not make the case either way that a country should or should not be run like a business. It does when people keep vilifying debt and they don't understand how "more debt can solve the growth problem". What happens when you go into austerity or debt cutting during a zero-bound economy? You're cutting your own people's wage and income and their ability to pay down their debt. Cheers!

Yes exactly! :) A country is not a business and should not be run like one. It puzzles me that people keep wanting to "slash debt" as if the country is anything like a business. No business sells 80-85% of its products to its own workers. Cheers! Shc No, my point is that your comparison is totally irrelvant; as in - it does not make the case either way that a country should or should not be run like a business. It does when people keep vilifying debt and they don't understand how "more debt can solve the growth problem". What happens when you go into austerity or debt cutting during a zero-bound economy? You're cutting your own people's wage and income and their ability to pay down their debt. Cheers!

LOL! Loved this one

Yes exactly! :) A country is not a business and should not be run like one. It puzzles me that people keep wanting to "slash debt" as if the country is anything like a business. No business sells 80-85% of its products to its own workers. Cheers! Shc

uhhh.. Canada sells 85% of its stuff to itself Australia is around 80-85% that too. The point i'm trying to make is: A country's economy cannot run like a business or any company. There are very few companies (if any) that sells 80-85% of its stuff to its own workers. Cheers! Shc

I keep hearing about how the country should be run like a business. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know any companies that sell more than 80 percent of what it makes to its own workers? The U.S economy sells 80-85% percent to its own citizens. That is probably the main thing about what a country's economy is supposed to do. Cheers!

hahaha. didn't know dz.com knew their geeky memes!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/ea/CBO_-_Revenues_and_Outlays_as_percent_GDP.png/800px-CBO_-_Revenues_and_Outlays_as_percent_GDP.png

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-21/romney-campaign-said-to-ask-scott-to-downplay-job-gains.html Politics... Cheers! Shc

Project Glass: Live Demo At Google I/O http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7TB8b2t3QE&feature=player_embedded#! A nice little video by Google. Guess we won't have to worry about GoPro snags! Cheers!

Check the CBO Budget and its analyses. This whole imaginary situation of yours is... imagined. Its amazing how important debates denigrates itself to these ridiculous comparisons instead of using past real-life experiments and/or studies. Check Massachusetts and how RomneyCare fared. You'l be surprised how well it did. Cheers! Shc I hear you running your mouth but I don't hear you saying anything. RomneyCare The most extensive studies conducted on RomneyCare is by Jonathan Gruber. His studies are found here: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17168 The conclusion of that paper clearly states: The quality of care didn't suffer, the program cost is on par to the projection and would indicate that ObamaCare's projected cost has been exaggerated (yes, exaggerated) and the number of people without insurance is down significantly. RomneyCare has been implemented for six years now. So what do you guys want? Like I said, we got 3 options: 1) Pre-2009 healthcare which everybody hated and recognized in serious need of reform 2) Heritage fund/RomneyCare/Affordable Health Care act 3) Government Health Care Cheers! Shc

Check the CBO Budget and its analyses. This whole imaginary situation of yours is... imagined. Its amazing how important debates denigrates itself to these ridiculous comparisons instead of using past real-life experiments and/or studies. Check Massachusetts and how RomneyCare fared. You'l be surprised how well it did. Cheers! Shc I hear you running your mouth but I don't hear you saying anything. Seeing how tomorrow is D-day for ACA... The 38th Solicitor General of the United States said: CF: I’ve never understood why regulating by making people go buy something is somehow more intrusive than regulating by making them pay taxes and then giving it to them. I don’t get it. It was comical to read the Heritage Foundation’s brief attempting to explain why they were changing their position on this. Something needed to be done about this problem. Everyone understood that. So, the Heritage Foundation said let’s do an individual mandate because it keeps it within free enterprise. The alternative was single payer. And they didn’t want that, and I’m in sympathy with that. So now all of a sudden the free-market alternative becomes unconstitutional and terribly intrusive where a government imposition and government-run project would not be? I don’t get it. Well, I do get it. It’s politics. Universal Health Care is constitutional yet the privatized version (created by the Republicans in the 1990s) isin't... The same people (Heritage Fund) who created the system are advocating privatizing Social Security with mandatory purchases from individuals . WHO IS The 38th Solicitor General ? It is Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. Hugs & Cheers! Shc

Check the CBO Budget and its analyses. This whole imaginary situation of yours is... imagined. Its amazing how important debates denigrates itself to these ridiculous comparisons instead of using past real-life experiments and/or studies. Check Massachusetts and how RomneyCare fared. You'l be surprised how well it did. Cheers! Shc I hear you running your mouth but I don't hear you saying anything. hahaha. You could of at least brought something to back your analogy. Anyway, let's start with this: The "old" U.S Health Care just did not work. "Half of all respondents (49%) indicated that their foreclosure was caused in part by a medical problem, including illness or injuries (32%), unmanageable medical bills (23%), lost work due to a medical problem (27%), or caring for sick family members (14%). We also examined objective indicia of medical disruptions in the previous two years, including those respondents paying more than $2,000 of medical bills out of pocket (37%), those losing two or more weeks of work because of injury or illness (30%), those currently disabled and unable to work (8%), and those who used their home equity to pay medical bills (13%). Altogether, seven in ten respondents (69%) reported at least one of these factors." REFERENCE: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1416947

Check the CBO Budget and its analyses. This whole imaginary situation of yours is... imagined. Its amazing how important debates denigrates itself to these ridiculous comparisons instead of using past real-life experiments and/or studies. Check Massachusetts and how RomneyCare fared. You'l be surprised how well it did. Cheers! Shc

At work so can't write in details, but: The U.S paid a WHOPPING 15% of its GDP on healthcare in 2008 (pre-Obamacare). This is double than other Western Countries. It baffles me when people say "we can't afford Obamacare" while they are wasting freaking FIFTEEN percent on healthcare. So we got 3 options: 1) Pre-2009 healthcare 2) Heritage fund/RomneyCare/Affordable Health Care act 3) Government Health Care Choose. Cheers! Shc

looool

The first jumps are always pretty scary. I was scared shitless in AFF jump 1 and jump 4 (with a really terrible jump 3). The more you jump, the less scared you will be when you're at the door. The really uncomfortable feeling of "why can't I just calm down" eventually subsides. imo, the best thing is to do tunnel time to gain confidence if you have one nearby. Cheers!

The Euro crisis is because of the way the Euro was structured. The U.S/U.K economic lag is due to a failure of the "natural" market. The problem is that the U.S from the PRIVATE SECTOR accumulated too much debt and the bubble popped in 2008 in the form of a housing crisis. People in the private sector are now paying their debt. More Saving > Spending = Recession So what to do in that case? Interest Rates need to be pushed down until Saving = Spending. U.S Interest Rates are already near-zero and Savings > Spending, and thus there is a failure of the "natural market". What to do in that case? The Government needs to step in and spend because the Private sector won't in order to make Savings = Spending However, the U.S economic debate got hijacked into "omg the Federal Government is accumulating too much debt" and "Public does a worse job than the Private sector". These two topics completely misses the point how the U.S got into the economic meltdown of 2008, why their economy is still lagging and how to bring the U.S economy into full-employment again. People will continue to doubt what I say, but it is almost textbook economics. But honestly, Euro crisis dwarf any problems the U.S has. Cheers!

I'm of the opinion that what we're doing is little more than some hardcore enabling. It's like a son with a gambling problem, and the parents want to keep the son from having his legs broken so they keep giving him money. The difference being that in this case, the parents are using money they've been taking from everyone else. As with a degenerate gambler (which really is what we're talking about) it is time to let them hit rock bottom. This would be something that could cause the necessary structural changes that could build strength. Of course there's no way that anyone would actually let stuff get messed up. Because that would require fixing it. Apart from Greece, this isin't really a matter of peripheral Euro countries "borrowing too much". The structure of the EURO itself is the problem. Countries with a debt problem cannot depreciate its currency to: A) make its business profitable and competitive again B) to bring their economic engine at full speed Greece and Portugal are relatively poor, with GDP per capita of 82 and 77 percent, respectively, of the EU average. But it’s no different, really, than the US situation. Alabama is at 74 percent of the US average, Mississippi at 67. What's the difference between U.S and EURO? The FEDERAL Government transfers money to STATES that are in trouble. If the STATES banks are in trouble, the FEDERAL mops it up. In the EURO, the country has to mop up its own banks. If it the single currency was to work, Germany-France need to do transfers in the same way U.S FEDERAL GOV does with the STATES. In the future, when I have more time on hand, I can write about Texas and how one of their economic crisis was as bad (or worse) than Greece. No real crisis developed because the Federal Gov just handed them "free money" to stop the confidence crisis. References for my STATS about EURO competitiveness vs US competitiveness: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_PUBLIC/2-20062012-AP/EN/2-20062012-AP-EN.PDF http://bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?ReqID=99&step=1 This whole notion that countries are sucking money off Merkel's tits is a very destructive ideology. It undermines real European reform and brings us closer to bankapocalypse. Economics is not a morality lesson and it does not work at all like a family budget. Cheers! Shc

Many of us are pretty unhappy with 8% unemployment (which we should rightfully be). However, there was a study (from C) that mentioned in the event that EuroBanks collapsed (keyword: the Banks), U.S unemployment would rise to around 20-30%.. It was approximately the same figure given by Hank Paulson (George Bush's secretary of treasury back in November 2008). It sounds like fear-mongering, but if banks like Citigroup/Bank of America/JP Morgan barely survived the Lehman brother collapse, I'm not too sure how they would survive a major Euro Bank collapse. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/fears-grow-of-consequences-of-potential-euro-collapse-a-840634.html And for our friends at the Bundesbank: Cheers! Shc

Another scaremongering article. Morsi wants to have more influence in the Middle East, but without disturbing the peace. The overall peace will stand with Israel. The U.S (Obama or Romney) won't bother to influence apart from infusing money into the opposing force political movement. Much ado about nothing because the military will still hold most of the Aces in the Egyptian deck of cards. Cheers! Shc

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/18e9a8f4-bbbc-11e1-9aff-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1yfNPhLrZ I hope none of us has forgotten how close we were to financial meltdown in Oct 2008-March 2009. Cheers! Shc

hey, there's a wingsuit race league that's starting in China around October... If that goes well, they might be able to expand to the Middle East. ...then who knows, maybe more :)

as experienced by anyone that has tried to organize a tandem outing for their friends or workplace. You start with 10 or 20 enthusiastic sounding folks but as soon as you ask for that $50 deposit for next Saturday, it's crickets. LOL so true.