So what about the crashing of the US dollar?

[neorichieb1971]

There are a select few US citizens on youtube bracing themselves for a dollar crash. When you look into it with a bit of interest and take the facts into consideration it starts to become a bit scary.

Doug Hunt, Peter Schiff etc always talk about putting at least 50% of your portfolio into gold. According to them the dollar will crash this year or next and will definitely crash before next Presidential election.

So what are the facts -

1) http://www.usdebtclock.org/ - The US in the past 10 months has spent more than $800 billion than it received in taxes. What this essentially means that anyone who is not working in the USA is spending foreign money or printed money that the Fed printed out of thin air.

2) USA has no GOLD. The Germans decided a year or two ago that they wanted to repatriotize their gold. Since WW2 they asked the USA to look after it. Within the past 2 or 3 years it disappeared. The USA agreed to send it back with a quota which was not reached. Apparently 5 tons was sent back to Germany but the experts are saying this was probably mined gold. What is interesting is that Ukraine recently sent the USA all their gold for safe keeping. Pundits are saying that gold will go straight to Germany. This equated to 33 tons.

3) According to reports China is buying up 1300 tons of Western gold every year. Western bank vaults have never seen a bar of gold that had a Chinese code on it. Therefore it has been suggested they are harvesting all their gold for themselves.

So taking gold to one side for a moment, why is this scary? Well, China wants to hold the global reserve currency and has not made it a secret. Russia and China and 21 other countries have reported to stop using the US$ for trade as a global reserve currency. This is where it gets interesting. Putin is reported to be holding the USA at financial gun point because it is said that if China had to choose Russia or the USA it would choose Russia. Between Russia and China they have an awful lot of US$. If they dump it, the US$ will die a quick and painful death. Or in other words it would like cost upwards of 3x 4x for anything you buy with it compared to todays US prices.

Most amazingly the US government is being accused to lying through its teeth about everything to its own nation. Apparently your economy is in tatters, nobody can find jobs. The jobs that there are pay diddly squat. All commodity shares have apparently been tampered with and your Fed is printing money until the trees run out. So this is why the other countries are losing faith in the USA.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is losing patience with the USA and that is where all the oil is coming from fueling your big V8 trucks. Petro dollars are what is keeping the USA afloat as it is. Without it your currency would also die.

Then we have interest rates. If you take the debt clock at point 1. The USA can only afford to pay off its debt at the lowest interest rates. If it raises by a percent or 2, your currency will take a nose dive.

Consider this. The USA manufactures a pityful amount compared to what it did in the 60's and 70's. Because you import most of your shit, you are also handcuffed in this area as well.

One thing that really irks me is that places like Greece have recently suffered a lot of pain for literally going bankrupt. Why does the USA seemingly go over budget, into bankruptcy and nobodies life seems to have changed not even a tiny bit? Where is the fairness in the world when one country is allowed to feel the pain and another isn't?

Any road, I'm not biased.. I have just done some homework listening to selective people on the net.

so my question to you shmuppers is : Are you aware of this shit? Does it bother you? Is it lies? Does the American people just not care? Are the media corrupt and not telling you? Whats going on?

Thanks for your feedback.

[Damocles]

Schiff's predictions have been spotty. Concerning gold, I was under the impression that the US still had something like 10,000 tons of the stuff with China well behind. Supposedly they're buying what they can.

Most amazingly the US government is being accused to lying through its teeth about everything to its own nation. Apparently your economy is in tatters, nobody can find jobs. The jobs that there are pay diddly squat. All commodity shares have apparently been tampered with and your Fed is printing money until the trees run out. So this is why the other countries are losing faith in the USA.

The U.S. unemployment rate is ~6.5% and has been dropping since 2010, when it hit 10%. Take that how you will. We are deeply in debt have been spending money rapidly. Actually, our total debt has sharply increased starting in the mid-1980's and has only accelerated since then. The popular joke is that we better start learning Mandarin, or Chinese, depending on who you're talking to. That being said, Japan owns just as much of our debt as China. Also note that our debt rating was downgraded, perhaps due to not passing a goddamn budget, perhaps due to other dumbass political factors. Also take that how you will.

tldr: It all depends on where you get your news. Over here, everyone spins it to fit their political agenda.

[BulletMagnet]

One thing that really irks me is that places like Greece have recently suffered a lot of pain for literally going bankrupt. Why does the USA seemingly go over budget, into bankruptcy and nobodies life seems to have changed not even a tiny bit? Where is the fairness in the world when one country is allowed to feel the pain and another isn't?

I seem to recall a recent thread where this subject came up in discussion...while I'm not an economist, the little I know about the whole debt situation is that most of that money is owed to ourselves, so the whole "China can demand its money any day now and we're screwed" argument is silly. I also take any "buy all the gold you can" admonition with more than a few grains of salt, considering how many hucksters have taken jittery middle-class types for a ride on that particular train lately.

As for Greece, I believe the fact that they (among other countries like them) adopted the Euro and thus gave up the ability to print their own money (which the US, of course, can still do) was a major factor separating us from them...not to mention, though the "austerity" crowd certainly sank its fangs into the US, much of Europe truly swallowed them hook-line-and-sinker, and have shifted even more of the piper's bill onto the average citizen, as opposed to the high-finance wheeler-dealers who deliberately inflated, profited from, and passed along the financial bubbles that have caused so much pain in recent years (and in contrast, Iceland and other states that took the initiative to invest in a recovery as opposed to starving their own people are doing considerably better in most respects, while the "confidence fairy" that's supposed to spur investment has yet to show up, though the self-interested howlers insisting she's coming haven't changed their tune a bit).

[BryanM]

Ok. Lots of things to go through. I'd do it in the form of rap if I were more awesome.

Peter Schiff

Is a scam artist. Don't listen to Peter. He tells you that money is worthless and metal is everything? Then why is he selling metal for currency? Is he just doing that out of the kindness of his heart? Is he some kind of liberal charity fairy?

No of course not. He's just making shitloads of money off of exploitable people.

For his "sky will rain blood" prophecies, if you say something is going to happen nonstop, after some millennia, some long aeons.. it's going to come true.

For "gold is the only thing worth anything", that's dumb on the face of it. It's no different than paper. You can't eat gold. You can't fuel your car with it. YOU CAN'T EVEN KILL STAR WRAITHS OR DRACULAS WITH IT WHEN THE RAPTURE COMES. For that you need silver and kosher salt.


US Economy

The economy is doing better than it ever has. That's what happens when you cut jobs you don't need.

If jobs are what people want more of.. the only route to that is workfare or welfare. But we're going in the opposite direction of that, what with the sequester. SNAP is down, the workforce of the state is low in population, and there's no sign anyone in the political sphere really wants more of this stuff.



All when we're looking forward to millions of jobs being automated with ghost cars in the future.


Greece

Greece is an example of the weak being exploited by the powerful. No different than it's always been. Burkina Faso or Germany after World War 1, who knows which way things will go there. Gold Dawn certainly has some ideas.

I seriously doubt they're going to give the Eurozone the finger, withdraw, and freeze/toss out the debt they're willing to repay. Or that their debtors would allow such a thing without spilling blood.

A nation really doesn't have any sovereignty at all if they can't control their currency.


USA's National Debt

You hear people saying our debt is going to kill us all. But it's just a subterfuge to argue for "fuck the poor" policies.

In the ~250 years that this nation has stood, the debt has only ever gone down... once. For a period of like four years, under president Jackson I think? In all that time, the end never came.

The reason for this is inflation.

As for the short term the CBO estimates we'll be roughly flatlined as a ratio of debt to GDP for the near future. Even in the worst case scenario we're not going to where Japan is on this figure today.



^ Obamacare and the sequester in action, I guess.


US Manufacturing

As output measured by GDP, we're above where we were in the 80's. Most of what we make or assemble is just more complex - fighter planes and stuff like the air blasters that keep insects out of our Wal-Marts.

That the fork printing plant is in Korea is of little import. It could just as easily be in Ohio. The only reason it's not is the two guys needed to push the button periodically would want five bux more an hour than their Korean equivalent.

We have more than enough resources to take care of ourselves. It's nearly an entire continent we have here.


Things To Legit Worry About Even Though We Have No Control Over Them

Recession 2.0
-------------

We didn't really do much to reform the banking system since the last crash. The next one is inevitable eventually. Some folks think it will happen around 2016. More or less public policy has been to try to prolong its coming, and pray your party isn't holding the potato when it explodes.

A guy wrote a book about it and he'd really like to have your money. People really don't appreciate that the middle class is a modern construct by hippys after the great depression. In an unregulated economy, you only ever have serfs and lords.


Peak Oil
--------

There's only so many old animal corpses to go around. There are documentaries about it. Collapse is the most popular one on the internet because it's about a paranoid guy with a mustache.

Said paranoid, Michael Ruppert, killed himself in April. Conspiracy theorists theorize, but his friends say he talked about it a lot. It was a lousy thing to hear happen; the man legit gave a shit. He was no Peter Schiff.


Global Warming
--------------

Everyone's going to die in a fire, maybe. Droughts in California have been pretty heavy. Heard Australia has trouble keeping its bat population from dropping dead.

[neorichieb1971]

I don't see how less jobs = better economy. People who work pay taxes, people who don't earn anything don't pay anything in taxes. The USA is in manufacturing decline. I personally think your lucky the Japanese built all those car factories over there.

Another thing none of you have touched on is the validity that other countries have little faith in the USA leading the global reserve currency. That is a big deal. Personally I think a country like China has a valid claim for it. If America makes nothing note worthy that the rest of the world wants its no big loss. Who can afford to live without China?

In the case of stealing Germany's gold? Surely this kind of "red flag" is a warning that the USA cannot be trusted.

I agree that Gold is just a metal though. I never did understand its value. But saying that China is lapping it up like there is no tomorrow. Again, the idea is to back the Yuan with a gold standard so that they can bid for the global reserve currency.

And what about Jesse Ventura? Can a non party candidate create more faith in the global political community? And the media, why no coverage? Its the land of the free so why not allow a non party candidate the same chance as the main 2?

[BulletMagnet]

I don't see how less jobs = better economy. People who work pay taxes, people who don't earn anything don't pay anything in taxes.

Somehow the stock market keeps hitting new highs, even as most of the country continues to struggle - simply another indication of how little stake our economic elite has these days in how the nation at large is doing, thanks to how successful it's been at privatizing gains and socializing risk over the years thanks to the pseudo-Randian stooges it sponsors for public office. The countless jobs it's outsourced to near-slave labor overseas, its incredible resistance to investing even the bare minimum in the domestic work force it does have, and the trillions of dollars it's stashed away in tax shelters are additional footnotes to that end.

And the media, why no coverage? Its the land of the free so why not allow a non party candidate the same chance as the main 2?

Because most of our media is owned by bloated for-profit conglomerates who continue to profit handsomely from an economic and political setup tilted enormously in their favor, and much prefer to keep the low-IQ Fox/MSNBC split going and half the country eternally at each others' throats. After all, if the citizenry at large realized that people on the other end of the political spectrum were being ripped off just as badly as they are, and that this could be used as a bridge to bring them together to some degree and possibly address some pretty big, universal problems with our society, well, that might threaten to cut into their bottom line.

[BryanM]

The economy isn't the job market. They're two separate things.

If you're producing just as much or more, with less people, is that not more efficient?

The only reason to feel negatively about this is if you view welfare or workfare as poison and that the only acceptable answer to anything is "more jobs". Not everyone can have a job.

and that this could be used as a bridge to bring them together to some degree and possibly address some pretty big, universal problems with our society

Haha, if only 47% of the country wasn't scared shitless of tiny tan children crossing our borders and more concerned over that.

I doubt Great Depression Redux would change anything. The first one had people like Lovecraft even turning into FDR progressives, but these days...

[Ed Oscuro]

Ironically, the same people who typically argue for the gold standard and inflation elimination (along with the debt, feeding into that) are the people who argue the virtues of hard work whenever possible (and even sometimes when it isn't). In reality, arguments for the gold standard, zero or super-low inflation, and debt elimination are meant to let people be lazy and continue to make money off money, not their actual inputs into the economy.

One of the big challenges for the future is going to be what to do when a vast number of people can't compete in the market, due to competition from fellow humans or for machines. On the one hand you have serious thoughts about welfare (which, despite the assumptions, doesn't imply idleness). On the other hand people are getting past the "joking" stage and starting to get more serious with calls for a return to subsistence living. I'm not sure you can seriously argue for anything other than the modern trajectory, or full-on subsistence / nomadic / Amish living, because just freezing technology at (say) the current level is unsustainable. Probably what is going to happen is, sooner or later, a shakeup of the order. Whether this will be in the form of deadly shocks I can't guess, but it's certainly possible.

I don't know economic history during Jackson's era much. My initial thought was that Jackson's anti-debt and anti-national bank arguments came at a cost of the attention of the country, at the same time that the people and the government were more distant than today - but reading this has me questioning whether his reasons were entirely wrong-headed after all. While the controversy seems quite modern in many respects, there is nevertheless more transparency and accountability in today's government functions (and of course Jackson himself, despite his populist intent, has come to embody disrespect for institutional processes, in his fight with the Supreme Court especially).

[Skykid]

I seem to recall a recent thread where this subject came up in discussion...while I'm not an economist, the little I know about the whole debt situation is that most of that money is owed to ourselves, so the whole "China can demand its money any day now and we're screwed" argument is silly.

That's not quite it, I think you're getting crossed lines between how serious debt actually is (it isn't, according to one helpful contributor) and the amount in US bonds held by China.
They don't need to demand the US buy back the bonds, they just need to float several billion on the global market for discount prices and that would cause the dollar value to drop through the floor overnight.

But they'll never, ever do that because they're not interested in a war (which would be the swift and immediate counter for crippling one's economy) and there's absolutely no gain in destroying a currency that fuels a vast proportion of their own domestic industry and profit. The only time they would attempt something so rash is if the US engaged them militarily first - so they kind of have you by the balls, so to speak.

Well, China wants to hold the global reserve currency and has not made it a secret. Russia and China and 21 other countries have reported to stop using the US$ for trade as a global reserve currency.

This is the normal way of things. The axis of power is shifting and so are the options. But the dollar is still hugely powerful, with the majority of oil trade still conducted in the currency thanks to the last fifteen years of middle eastern hostile takeovers.

That being said, Japan owns just as much of our debt as China.

Japan's national debt per capita is even more fucked than the USA's. They're having to borrow from other sources. But again I'm not sure national debt means anything at all these days, if what that poster in that thread about national debt said was accurate (seemed confident.)

We didn't really do much to reform the banking system since the last crash.

What can be done? The country is owned by banks. They'll continue to do whatever serves their interests first and foremost. The proletariat can deal with another recession while they wait it out on their yachts.

US Manufacturing

As output measured by GDP, we're above where we were in the 80's. Most of what we make or assemble is just more complex - fighter planes and stuff like the air blasters that keep insects out of our Wal-Marts.

That's not quite the problem. The problem is you're manufacturing far less domestically because fifty years of fucking the common factory worker out of liveable wages has finally reached the point of fucking them out of jobs. The US produces plenty - offshore. All healthy economies require a healthy domestic industry: one to create jobs, and two to ensure the population reinvest their wages back into the country's own industries. The more American people spend on Chinese made products because they're the only ones affordable after fifty years of being fucked out of liveable wages, the more the domestic economy suffers. This is a real problem for many Western countries. The UK has been completely devoid of any real domestic industry since the 60s and a large majority of earnings are spent on overseas products. This is why our customs tax is so vicious, to try and curb the spending and force a percentage of money back into the UK economy. The US must be considering a similar measure at this stage.


It's mostly a false alarm

American industry is a behemoth. I walk down the street in China and everywhere I look there are American pies: Pizza Hut, Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC, Subway. Every fridge is filled with Coca Cola, Sprite, Pepsi and Fanta. Every movie theatre has at least two to three US movies a month. Every shopping centre has a Hollister and an Apple store, amongst others. Every video game top ten sales list is US dominated. US industry is inescapable and prevalent anywhere there's money to be spent.

There are domestic problems thanks to a half-decade advance toward completely deregulated capitalism: an insanity that people are only now beginning to notice the effects of. Either way all this talk of a US collapse is still premature, its sum industry is still monstrously large and not going anywhere. The problem is the division between the rich who own those industries and the poor that maintain them has reached a near impossible to rectify state, and will continue to worsen.

I think all this US going down the toilet stuff is mostly worried doom speak, but I'm not ignorant to the fact that it's a topic that keeps resurfacing everywhere and with increasing frequency. I don't know if there's anything in that.

[BulletMagnet]

What can be done? The country is owned by banks.

The first thing that I'd suggest is a deliberate dismantling of the US's crippling worship of the rich as untouchable gods, whose every action is automatically justified simply because they're rich and thus must be superior beings to the rest of us, who of course deserve whatever we get. To paraphrase one way I've heard it put, the US is the only place in the world where it's more shameful for a blue-collar citizen to owe money than it is for a white-collar one to steal it. From there it's a short leap to finally dispel the diseased myth that the free market is totally perfect and that those who benefit most from it (guess who?) must be in the right.

When you get right down to it, while the underlying issues are complex the case really isn't a particularly difficult one to make; just at a glance across our nation's history, every time the economic elite have been given free rein to rape and pillage the promised "trickle down" to the rest of us has never, ever happened (witness the current wealth gap, as the right talks out of both ends about how eventual shared prosperity is both inevitable [because their market theory is perfect] and impossible [since the nonrich are the scum of the earth and don't deserve it]), and more than once the economy has collapsed as a direct result of their actions (which of course leads to immediate abandonment of their cherished free-market principles as they shit their diapers and demand that Big Bad Uncle Same save them, only to begin the cycle again the second any danger to them has passed). Next up, a long-overdue indictment of the fallacy that "greed is good".

No matter how much they whine and cry, it's inescapable that the country's most prosperous time was also the era in which industry and finance were most heavily regulated and the wealthy were most heavily taxed. The wealthy were still wealthy, of course, but they didn't hold sole sway over the way money and power flowed, and were moreover unable to swing back and forth from hard-core libertarians to government rim-jobbers whenever the occasion suited them - in otherwords, they were forced to live on the same planet as the rest of us. Once we widely acknowledge that they will not do this unless they are forced, and that drawing that line and enforcing it is not "socialism" but "society", we'll be a long way towards curing what ails both us and the many, many countries we've screwed over in the name of corporate greed. We did it once, and we can do it again.

[Skykid]

What can be done? The country is owned by banks.

The first thing that I'd suggest is a deliberate dismantling of the US's crippling worship of the rich as untouchable gods, whose every action is automatically justified simply because they're rich and thus must be superior beings to the rest of us, who of course deserve whatever we get.

Will only ever happen now by way of automatic weaponry.

The thing is, you invented this system and delivered it to the rest of the "free and democratic" world - those who were already there by choice and those others who were forced by Kissinger's will. Most of everyone else is suffering similar fates, although some with more sensible governing intuition, like the Germans, less so. The Chinese are practicing your rules of capital acquisition but not being stupid enough to return the ball.

But America's apple is the biggest and subsequently the most rotten. "To the core" is absolutely applicable: it's not just an erosion of balance, but morals, ethics, respect, compassion and hope.

I do not see a recovery because I don't see an opportunity for reasoning with the power of the banks. Your government and leaders have no power, the elite has established itself. The only change will be either via a nationwide economic decline, war, or, most optimistic, an uprising.

The most likely scenario is that it will all go quietly and ever so slowly right down the shitter and when the dust has settled 5% of the population will leave on private jets and buy small islands while everyone else lives in abject poverty.

Poetic for a nation with so much faith invested in the power of an omnipotent being.

Only money can save you folks, only money.

[CMoon]

I think all this US going down the toilet stuff is mostly worried doom speak, but I'm not ignorant to the fact that it's a topic that keeps resurfacing everywhere and with increasing frequency. I don't know if there's anything in that.

The fact that all this doomsday talk is more and more prevalent may have no actual connection to reality. Over the past couple decades we've seen the AM radio crazies become mainstream (IE Alex Jones ect.) and FOX news has become a legitimate news source for people. A stupidly huge number of people think 9/11 was a government plot and probably more believe that there are aliens among us...maybe even controlling our government. It is impossible for me to say that more people believe in crazy fucked up shit now than before, but it seems the internet has given more of these people a voice, and consequently, some sort of legitimacy.

I don't mean to imply that money matters are the same as UFOlogy, but the 'sky is falling' mentality is still there. The sky isn't falling, unless we're talking about climate change, biodiversity or the human population.

[xorthen]

If the dollar crashes, Gold will have no real value. The only thing with true value will be guns, ammo, food, shelter. Yeah, I would take any food over Gold any day in a SHTF situation. Gold will not feed you, food will.

[BryanM]

There's always some reason to be optimistic about young people. Stuff like the the Pew poll that resulted in a 49/43 favorable result for socialism/capitalism among millennials. Maybe that's all thanks to the GOP overusing the word, whatever.

It's really only a few decades away that we'll finally begin to shed off the Reagan era psychosis. We had 50 years before that, where the idea the rich would take care of us just because they're nice was marginalized. They don't have a stupid wedge issue like race to divide us again. Texas will likely flip to solid blue, in time, after the upcoming $millions spent on getting people to actually vote. Magic robot cars will annihilate entire swaths of jobs.

It's not unthinkable we could get to a point where a citizen's wage is politically possible in 50 to 80 years. Alaska's massively socialist oil dividend program somehow happened despite the forces arrayed against it. Delusional optimism!

[Skykid]

At least you still have affordable housing and credit card companies ready to tie you into life long debt.

I'm not sure the latter's a plus but at least it's a means to an end.

[BulletMagnet]

Will only ever happen now by way of automatic weaponry.

For whatever it's worth I like to believe that the oligarchs, who in the end are no more superhuman than anyone else, are far more capable of being manipulated, for good or ill, than they'd have us believe (heck, most of their "argument" centers on the belief that they're basically unthinking, unfeeling manifestations of abstract market forces, which of course is garbage on several levels). Once, as BryanM alludes to, people finally start getting sick enough of the broken promises of their political allies and become more open to accurate accounts of what actually goes on with our leadership and our economy (the re-emergence of an actual liberal establishment that's willing to get off its ass and reach out to wide swaths of people in earnest would hasten this, though methinks this part will take far longer than it ought to), the sheer numbers of people actually involved in the process will finally force the self-appointed John Galts to change their tune, since no matter how rich they get they'll always be grossly outnumbered, not to mention highly dependent on the acquiescence of their subordinates (i.e. everyone) to keep the gravy train rolling.

Public opinion might be more muddled and difficult to focus than it ought to be, but once enough people get behind something (or, alternately, abandon it) things can still change very quickly, whether negatively (ACORN and everything else an unaccountable weasel like James O'Keefe touches) or positively (the public outcry against SOPA and pro-net neutrality). I'm definitely not advocating a pie-in-the-sky viewpoint of the near future, but eventually everyone reaches their "Popeye moment", and the "greed is good" mentality will eventually be its own undoing. We got to the sorry state we're in not by accident but via deliberate action, which means that the process can also be, to at least some degree, deliberately undone.

[Damocles]

I'm hoping for an economic collapse where all value ends up in relation to alcohol.

[louisg]

Does this have to do with the Bitchin' Amero?

[Devil Soundwave]

The main issue is that the majority of the world is no longer on a gold standard (exception being Switzerland I believe). WE all adopted the US dollar as a reserve currency after WW2 as the US DID still have gold standard, then Nixon booted that, so we were all essentially pegged to the US dollar and whatever the US decided it was worth. The several rounds of quantitative easing the US have done over the past decade or so have very much been a factor in pushing other powers to accumulate gold and start to use other currencies instead such as the EURO. The US debt is now so huge that the interest alone increases at an ever faster rate that they cannot possibly cover it.

The whole "China can demand its money any day now and we're screwed" argument is silly.

It's not so much that China will demand it's money, it's more that China are holding a shit-ton of US dollars and can flood the market at any time, pushing the buying power of the dollar down.

If the dollar crashes, Gold will have no real value. The only thing with true value will be guns, ammo, food, shelter. Yeah, I would take any food over Gold any day in a SHTF situation. Gold will not feed you, food will.

Not so. See Weimar Republic. People had to use wheelbarrows full of Deutschmarks to buy bread, but an ounce of gold would buy you a house. In any case, what you are describing is not merely the crash of a currency, such as that seen in Argentina, you're describing the apocalypse.

[neorichieb1971]

Ok, read all that above. What happens if more people lose jobs and more people go on welfare? Does America just print more money?

Since the USA dollar hasn't dropped in value against the pound I can only assume the Bank of England is printing almost as much as well?

[BulletMagnet]

It's not so much that China will demand it's money, it's more that China are holding a shit-ton of US dollars and can flood the market at any time, pushing the buying power of the dollar down.

As Skykid noted above that's pretty unlikely to ever happen.

What happens if more people lose jobs and more people go on welfare? Does America just print more money?

Either that or finally raise upper-end tax rates back to sane levels and invest the money in public projects that not only revitalize and remobilize the population at large but pay dividends not too terribly far down the road - repairing or replacing our horrendously under-maintained infrastructure would be a good start.

[Skykid]

It's not so much that China will demand it's money, it's more that China are holding a shit-ton of US dollars and can flood the market at any time, pushing the buying power of the dollar down.

As Skykid noted above that's pretty unlikely to ever happen.

I'd be willing to bet a large sum on never. Its best use would be retaliatory: and something tells me that's the reason China lent so much in the first place. The US is not in a position to repay its debt, everyone knows that - but it's a formidable trump card to hold the economic key to your threats, something the US has practiced exhaustively since WW2.

For whatever it's worth I like to believe that the oligarchs, who in the end are no more superhuman than anyone else, are far more capable of being manipulated, for good or ill, than they'd have us believe (heck, most of their "argument" centers on the belief that they're basically unthinking, unfeeling manifestations of abstract market forces, which of course is garbage on several levels). Once, as BryanM alludes to, people finally start getting sick enough of the broken promises of their political allies and become more open to accurate accounts of what actually goes on with our leadership and our economy (the re-emergence of an actual liberal establishment that's willing to get off its ass and reach out to wide swaths of people in earnest would hasten this, though methinks this part will take far longer than it ought to), the sheer numbers of people actually involved in the process will finally force the self-appointed John Galts to change their tune, since no matter how rich they get they'll always be grossly outnumbered, not to mention highly dependent on the acquiescence of their subordinates (i.e. everyone) to keep the gravy train rolling.

I like your optimism but I don't share it: I come from a country with a rigid class system - something not so ingrained in the US. Yes, oligarchs and the super wealthy are human too, but what kind of persuasion do you think exists that will get them to sacrifice a portion of their earnings for the good of the common man. That would be unprecendented.

Remember what happened with Chavez and the Venezeulan elite? The only thing they put their money into was an illegal coup to remove Chavez and appoint a leader who would maintain the interests of the rich.

Look at Thailand's ongoing political issues: the wealthy shut down the entire city, costing the country billions in tourism revenue, because they don't want higher taxation to support low income people. A friend in Thailand expressed to me when I was there in January that the city lockdown -all the tents, mobile lavatories, food stalls, free water etc etc, is backed by the rich to support the movement, and those people can afford to sleep in a tent for three months and not worry about their bank balance. What if the poor tried to do the same and occupy Bangkok? It would be over in a matter of days because they have no support and no income. They'd starve.

This is the cold truth when it comes to the power the rich over the working classes. To quote Mao Tse Tung, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." He was an asshole, but it's true.

[Mischief Maker]

Understanding meme theory eliminates the necessity of so many conspiracy theories.

The dark side of the American Dream is not a thing of design, but accident. To whit:

"In America, no matter your starting handicap, if you work hard you can become a millionaire, you can become a movie star, you can become president of the United States"

Logically this statement also means:

"In America, if you aren't a millionaire, if you aren't a movie star, if you aren't president of the United States, you must not be working hard, regardless of your starting handicap."

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

[BryanM]

but what kind of persuasion do you think exists that will get them to sacrifice a portion of their earnings for the good of the common man.

Nothing like it since the great depression, when they were faced with the prospect of losing all of the money.

That's rather the entire point of Karl Marx style thinking: Capitalism is designed to slough off as many costs as possible, workers included. Outsourcing and technology are mechanisms to accomplish that. Eventually things get so shitty that people will finally get tired of it.

The election of FDR was a revolution, never forget that. Even with the rise of Reagan, the changes that came under that regime still persist and are (nearly) universally beloved. Just try to remove the minimum wage. Or Lyndon B. Johnson's medicare. Or Kennedy's modification to the sustenance program that made it simply means-tested; you don't have to pay for a share of the cost to receive food aid any longer.

That's a somewhat wide swatch of time, over three decades. We're just very pessimistic people because we grew up under the shadow of Reagan (and his buddy what's her face). Since then we've seen, what, Obamacare? As we used to have to pay to receive SNAP and that changed, so, too, will this eventually morph into universal medicare. Reagan is merely a ghost now.

But in short another depression can elicit some change very quickly. Which will lead to hippy politicians getting elected and doing stuff again, or the rise of fascism and throwing people into ovens. Assuming the other dying in a fire thing is avoided. Delusional optimism!

[BulletMagnet]

I come from a country with a rigid class system - something not so ingrained in the US.

One could definitely quibble with that latter part, but that'd be a bit beside the point, heh.

Yes, oligarchs and the super wealthy are human too, but what kind of persuasion do you think exists that will get them to sacrifice a portion of their earnings for the good of the common man. That would be unprecendented.

It's not a matter of "persuasion" - it's absolutely a matter of force, albeit non-violent force, at least I would hope so. The whole problem is that society from the bottom up feels that it needs to have the permission of the self-interested wealthy to do anything, no matter how terribly the latter have behaved - it's the mindset that backs the horrid notion that you can commit any crime against humanity you please as long as you can claim it was done for profit ("it's a business, they only exist to make money"), as if that alone were enough to absolve any sin you could think of. Once that notion fades from the larger consciousness - and considering how much harm it's done and continues to do to a vast majority of the population I believe it could be dispelled VERY easily with a concerted effort, which is what we continue to lack (can you picture a modern politician, even a "liberal" one, echoing FDR's iconic "I welcome their hatred," or even Eisenhower's assertion that those who oppose the welfare state are morons?) - the chain that willingly sends all of the wealth and power upwards with a big smile on its face will be broken, and the rich will be faced with the prospect of either facing reality or, indeed, inciting the violence you mention.

Depending on whether or not the grifter class has become such a ludicrous, semi-sentient mass that it would rather lose everything it has in a bloody struggle than give up a chunk of it but still remain Pretty Damn Rich after they're done, I suppose one could see violence as inevitable, and in my darker moments I sometimes picture the guillotine coming back into fashion, but considering that the contemporary upper crust runs entirely on short-term self-interest (hence its aforementioned willingness to switch from fiercely independent to government teat-sucker at a moment's notice, principles be damned), I think that with their backs to the wall they'd have no real choice but to start contributing in earnest to the society they live in, and once the "wealth makes right" fallacy has dissipated they'll have absolutely nothing to fall back on. Who knows, maybe some measure of violence will end up being warranted, but then again that's what those Tea Party nutcases who have shot up convenience stores in hopes of "starting a revolution" thought, and I'd prefer to explore every last alternative before heading anywhere near that route.

[Ed Oscuro]

The whole "China can demand its money any day now and we're screwed" argument is silly.

It's not so much that China will demand it's money, it's more that China are holding a shit-ton of US dollars and can flood the market at any time, pushing the buying power of the dollar down.

I really ought to look up what sage economists have said on this subject already, but my hunch is that this would be about as effective as trying to kill us with the smoke from burning their own fields down. Well, there certainly would be some immediate repercussions for the US's international trade, but there would be repercussions for anybody using dollars anywhere. China would end up with a huge post-fiscal-lipo skin flab and empty wallet - not much to show for years of the nation's output - and the US could probably start to limit the damage by adopting tight money policies (while issuing a lot more greenbacks and coins to fight inflation). Domestically, I think this would lead to "dollar isolationist" policies.

I just don't see how the move would ultimately be useful. It's like saying that there is some rapper who has this most amazing rap battle lyric held in reserve, but he's not gonna use it in case of a showdown. Meanwhile, his main antagonist is hustling every day and swimming in money. If the war of words turns violent - who's going to have the gats and the homies to wield them?

More seriously, the money (like the gold, or the unopened cans of food in World War Z) doesn't do anything by itself. If China decides to flood the market, not only has it done something that could be seen as starting a war (...though with the anti-Russia sanctions lately, I'm starting to wonder about that), it also hasn't used that money to buy or build anything that could actually defend itself if that war turns hot. At the same time, everything they would do there would hurt their own positions just as much as the U.S. - and probably hurt China more, since it is still quite heavily an export economy. I'd only ever see this happening if somebody isolationist, nationalistic, and insane got in power.

The dark side of the American Dream is not a thing of design, but accident. To whit:

"In America, no matter your starting handicap, if you work hard you can become a millionaire, you can become a movie star, you can become president of the United States"

Don't think you're entirely serious here, Mischief Maker, but the program of wealth accumulation and consolidation by the wealthy does require a kind of open conspiracy. It's also definitely not accidental. It is accidental, in a narrowly-defined logical way that doesn't really take into account simple observational skills, that this money often comes out of people who are not incredibly wealthy already.

For example: @ SkyKid: US-originated brands (Pizza The Hutt, Starbucks, whatever) does not mean the money goes to the US. It goes to whoever owns the company shares (I almost wrote "whoever owns the dollars" which still actually makes sense.)

[Devil Soundwave]

Ok, read all that above. What happens if more people lose jobs and more people go on welfare? Does America just print more money?

Based on previous form, yes.

Since the USA dollar hasn't dropped in value against the pound I can only assume the Bank of England is printing almost as much as well?

Possibly, but not necessarily. It isn't exactly super healthy though, $1.68 per pound is pretty rubbish for Americans (great for us).

One thing to bear in mind is bank loans. You go to a bank for a loan, and they say "yeah, you can have ten grand". They don't give you a gold bar. They don't even give you ten thousand notes. They add a line item to a database on a computer, essentially making up a 10k "debt" which they didn't have the actual real funds to cover in the first place. This is another way that the overall currency supply is sneakily increased. This is why banks get fucked when "toxic debt" (not being paid back) outnumbers "good debt" (being paid back with interest).

Ed - issuing more greenbacks and coins would not fight inflation, that IS inflation, i.e. a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of currency due to an inflated currency supply. Inflating the currency supply only exacerbates the problem, which is why quantitative easing is a bloody stupid idea, as is not having the global currency pegged to something of value.

In the 1930s, an ounce of gold would buy you a made to measure suit, but it would cost about $30 or so (off the top of my head, can't be arsed to look it up and be exact). The ounce will still buy you the suit today, but how many dollars would you need? Artificial inflation of the currency supply is not the answer.

[PAPER/ARTILLERY]

The sky isn't falling, unless we're talking about climate change, biodiversity or the human population.

Don't really understand the part about biodiversity, can you elaborate on that?

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

Americans are the group of people least able to handle a complete economic collapse. With their bizarre culture of consumerism, indulgence, luxury and vanity, losing access to the basic necessities would be incomprehensible to the average middle class citizen. It is unfortunate that they are all armed with automatic weapons, I don't see things being pleasant if it ever reaches the brink.

[CMoon]

The sky isn't falling, unless we're talking about climate change, biodiversity or the human population.

Don't really understand the part about biodiversity, can you elaborate on that?

Should have written 'loss of' biodiversity. No, biodiversity itself isn't a problem
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july ... 72414.html