Are we witnessing the collapse of America?

^^^ and if you were working class poor before 1913 it was no better than China. You would like to return to that?

 

Could our lack of social skills and common sense have anything to do with the collapse of moral decency and education skills ??

I dont think we in the US are going to to see the fall of America in terms of it being physically wiped out. What we will possibly see is its decline as decided by the actions of its political elite

We cannot maintain our economy based on the old 19th century was of thinking.
I don't think you're witnessing the fall of America,,we are beginning to witness the fall of capitalism. Over the next ten years a range of jobs are going to be replaced by technology. These won't be low-income low-skill jobs, it'll be investment bankers, doctors, journalists and even programmers who get replaced by algorithms.
Eventually we're going to run out of jobs, . Basically we need to start building a society where not everyone has to work in the sense we think of work today.
I really dont have the answers , as Im not an economist ,or have a crystal ball - -I ,likre the rest of us ,have a lot of questions... that I hope will be addressed, so my kid and grandkids have a direction. - I believe for people in thier 60,s - it is what it is- -

 

program's to write programs replacing human programmers ... who's gonna write the code for that except a programmer? as far as things like investing and such, this is the perfect thing for a computer algorithm to analyze the market and make accurate predictions, that way you always get the best deal.

the amount of population is increasing inversely compared to the amount of human labor required. eventually we are going to have that situation where we only need a relative few workers, there won't be enough that needs to be done for everyone to work 40 hours a week, unless you make up some kind of busy work to give them just so they'll have something to do. of course there will always be highly specialized fields in advanced things like math and science, and computer science.

 

im doing well, little sleepy tho, jj

i think a lot of it has a whole lot to do with having better tools. a lot of effort goes into designing and building these tools, and in a way they are more important than the task they will be used on. in a lot of cases though this makes a certain job cost a lot less, more efficient, and in many cases very low maintenance requiring minimal human intervention. eventually things like wages and money will probably just fade away as they become increasingly irrelevant, they simply will not longer really have a place in society where they serve a useful function. it might be thousands of years though before that happens (or less, it's hard to tell with the speed of advancement these days, and i expect the speed not to slow down but to get faster and faster)

now i reconsider what i said about the programs that write themselves, it is possible i suppose, but not really in a way that gives us any creative control over the resulting software. this is the reason for programming languages so that it can be exactly specified what the machine is to to, and is not open to it's own interpretation about what the instructions mean. at that point the machines would really have to be considered as a distinct sentient entity, most likely we are in a symbiotic relationship with them. we will always have people to invent things, and create new things (such as new types of machines). maybe the machines can invent new machines too, that are just as good, but i think we'll always want to at least have the option of trying things ourselves, the way we see fit even if we might also be just fine to leave it to them.

 

Makes sense....make things to replace us....

 

the biggest threat politically right now, is people who are too angry and vengeful to care if they destroy it or not.
and their anger is fed mostly by lies, and situations created by manipulations that go by the names of privatization and austerity.
and those the result of this out of control doomsday machine of corporate economics.
and there's no kind or amount of belligerence that can fix that for the better,
but of course people who hate logic, don't what to hear logic, or accept responsibility for their own lack of consideration.
even when that's really what's biting them in the ass that they're angry about.

there are other factors involved to. the limits of resources are real,
and the accumulated results of hundreds of years of resource mismanagement,
are catching up with the prevalence of blind assumptions.

not just for america, but for all of humanity and possibly all life on planet earth.

resource mismanagement comes back to the blindness of economic theory to everything outside of its closed loop of self

 

I remember a lot of numerology back in the 80s. The one that really sticks in my mind came about when it was predicted that Reagan would bring about WW3. I forget who, but someone suggested that Ronald Wilson Reagan = 666 because each of his names has 6 letters. I can only wonder what that person was thinking when neither WW3 nor the Rapture occurred on Reagan's watch.

I don't put much stock in it personally.

 

I really truly do not want to be distracted, because I don't want to miss anything concerning Trump going to prison.

 

I'll make a note of what you said, to read later.

 

Reagan ruined the trucking business with stupid regulation which governed the truck drivers but let the trucking companies get away with murder. Reagan and Nixon killed the teamster's union, which had provided protection, good pay, and a good retirement for the drivers. Thanks to these Republicans now the truckers have no good retirement plans. For single truck owner operators, Reagan raised fuel taxes, taxes on tires, changed depreciation schedules, took away investment credit when the guys bought a new truck, but he let the corporate executives depreciate private yachts and jets, and collect investment credit for them. Because of Reagan, the independent truckers had to pay a luxury tax on their new truck, but not the corporate executive who got a new yacht. Reagan was all about protecting rich White guys, not helping the working man.

 

might have a whole lot to do with why we have a retarded wanna be mafia don named trump in the oval office.

 

Does anyone else think Trump is a representation of a last minute attempt to change the course of birthrate statistics? I don't know how to explain this, but I think the goals he is fighting for, and the trends he is fighting against, well it is much too late to reverse them.

I think Trump's administration is looking ahead, at population. Statistics for the future show a number of things. One is that China will have a larger GDP than the US soon, while in some records it already does. The other thing they are trying to reverse, is the fact the racial makeup which identifies as white people is not birthing people at a rate that it used too. I have nothing against any race, but I am trying to be politically correct about explaining this. There was times in US history that the population was doubling every 25 years. And it was mostly just northwestern Europeans coming here. It is sort like a racial war right now, because people of Latin descent are having kids much faster than anyone else here. For the record I am from Asia and Christian, so I am pretty much indifferent to politics here at the moment. I think the administration now is trying to really reverse this population trend. It is estimated that by the middle and end of the century, people of Latin descent will be a major part of the United States' population. They will probably outnumber white people quite possibly. I think that people in the federal leadership now, mostly conservatives, know this and are scrambling at the last second to try and stop that. Well that's how it is with so many policies, they wait till the last second to do something. My point here is also evident in the attempts to make abortions illegal. So the administration is fighting this trend on two fronts, by stopping Latin immigrants and others from coming in, and by encouraging white people to have more kids. Well obviously the news is pretty haywire, and doesn't really explain it like that. I think that's their rationale, they are trying to ensure the status quo will remain the same for the future.

I don't know actually how I feel about it, but I think that's what's going on. It just seems like an attempt at self-preservation. I think some of these trends are too late to reverse now, especially the China one. The whole tariffs thing is only patchwork to reverse the trade dependency on China. We gave up all our manufacturing here. Well actually I wasn't really around when there actually was manufacturing in the US. It turned into a service economy for the most part, which is kind of like a charade. America became increasingly anti-communist in the 20th century, and at the same time gave up all its manufacturing. Now it is dependent on China's communist manufacturing for some many goods. I mean it is kind of ironic in a way, obviously there is something wrong there. I find that to be a bit hypocritical, I mean obviously communism is efficient enough of a system to produce a lot of goods for cheap, but we are opposed to it ideologically. We like cheap products at low prices, but don't like how they are made, or choose to ignore that aspect.

America will probably experience a leveling off in the playing field. There are also other trends which no president would be able to reverse at this point. It's too late and actually very difficult to defy certain statistics. The emerging economics also in India and other developing countries also took a lot of jobs from the US. But even if they didn't, they would be an emerging market anyway. I mean no world power can have the best of everything all the time. The EU also has a strong economy. So what are we really doing here, trying to preserve American exceptionalism? The wise thing to do, would be to start investing in human capital, infrastructure, and avoid intervening in foreign conflicts. There is really way too much focus on social issues, ultimately there needs to be a redistribution of wealth for the US to keep a strong middle class.

 

It is legal to shoot anyone in Texas trying to steal your wallet, legal to bust down doors in Arizona without a warrant, legal for cops to confiscate everyone's cellphones, legal for the mayor of NYC to use experimental Pentagon weapons on civilians and arrest 26 reporters in one day, legal for our glorious leader to be a democrat who converts to Neo-Nazi, hasn't paid taxes in over twenty years, cuts the mass media a deal on their rent, and is elected against the wishes of this own party leaders. The Neo-Nazis are promoting the Big Lie of Hitler, that if they merely keep insisting Nazis are not criminals and anathema to a democratic society the idiots will eventually believe them. The US collapsed twenty years ago, how fucking far behind the times can you be!

The governor of Texas threatened to secede from the union, which is just an indication the vultures are circling and prepared to divide the entire country up into nice bite sized pieces. Of course, in the name of growth, progress, and the American way!

 

Wait this works..

Rammstein, Amerika. Go.

We are witnessing the collapse of Amerika
Amerika
Amerika

 

Who are these Americanskies? When they all vote for whoever advertises the most, the only American left in the room is whoever has the biggest guns and money.

 

It seems like the real threat is a war with Iran. Thankfully, they have indicated that prospect does not appeal to them. Next up is the trade war. I have no idea what it does. I just know the DOW is reacting badly, and soy bean crops are rotting in their silos or whatever they're kept in since the Chinese aren't buying. I don't know what's going to happen, but I sort of take it with a grain of salt because it's a stain on the lapel of the current administration that I don't like.

 

Take comfort in knowing that each new administration is more insane than the last, making them progressively more self-defeating. Unfortunately, German required their Hitler and the rest of the world to smack them down hard before they actually found the stones to become human beings.

 

The white population are killing themselves and no longer making as many babies, preferring making money and spending it to anything else. That's not an early stage development, but one that is reaching critical mass, which is why some Neo-Nazi politicians are already making videos begging their white constituents to do their duty to their race. The Japanese and EU are going through the same thing. Workaholics don't reproduce when money is the only thing they are taught to value. Of course, they are intent on going out with that cash in both hands, while their children have largely abandoned fundamentalism and many simply wait for their parents to die, so they can inherit their money.

Tom Petty's children are suing his wife. My advice is to send them a case of their favorite liquor, and watch them die faster, complaining about taxes.

 

Don't take the ups and downs of the DOW as indicating much from a strategic perspective: it is a highly reactive gauge, reacting to today's events. Let's see, the DOW just closed at an all time high, did it not?

One of my personal nightmares is murderous dictatorships, like Iran and North Korea, having weapons of mass destruction. Iran in particular is an aggressive, expansionist regime, bent on destruction of much that I hold dear in this world: liberty, freedom of inquiry, conscience, and expression. These are things that all too many Americans take for granted, but they are more the exception than the rule in human history and today.

If Iran gets nukes- as Obama basically gave them a path- they will be used. We should stop them, and if it takes war today- when they do not yet have them- so be it. Better today than later. I think you have not learned the history of the 1930's: stop Hitler at the Rhine, and you can prevent a horrendous war.

As for China, it has taken the US of A for a ride for over a generation. They have gotten what they wanted- including a developing hegemony over the Pacific, control over the global supply chain, and the transference and outright theft of valuable technology. We have gotten (relatively) inexpensive iPhones and great prices on Amazon. God bless Trump for standing up to them!