The U.S. budget for 2010 will be $3,600,000,000,000.00, yes 3.6 Trillion Dollars. It looks more real unabbreviated. Abbreviation tends to make people accept their future tax burden without question, because of the insignificant-seeming lack of zeroes.
President Obama has inherited a huge problem, undeniably the worst financial situation in our history due to the effects of inflation and our dependence on foreign products. The joke after World War II was any product ”Made in Japan”. America is now the joke.
We as a country have lived so long without the ability to make what we need to live our embellished lives, that the tools to do the myriad jobs of manufacturing seem to have all been sold to the ambitious third-world countries to which we are now dependant. The industrial greatness that America has exercised over the last 200 years has dissipated and has been absorbed by the smaller but more success-focused developing countries with the ability to make what we need for a lot less than we can.
Somewhere along the way, we have retired our ability, our knowledge, our genius and invention for the recliner and big-screen TV’s manufactured in Asia; And why not? It is certainly easier to go to Wal Mart and do the week’s grocery shopping than to grow your own corn.
We would rather watch the History Channel documentary on the greatness of America’s “Industrial Age” than go to the laboratory to work on alternative energy sources. Our world-wide competitors provide American TV with plenty of money to hawk their products to the American “recliner class” with calculated efficiency, endorsed and taught to them by the American media executives hoping for a future piece of foreign pie. Advertising; here is yet another skill delegated to foreign future powers, leaving Americans wondering, “Why did I get laid off? Oh well, time to watch the Beverly Hillbillies.”
In a country which has traditionally pointed the finger of blame to any available scapegoat, we are deficient now to spotlight any one person or reason for our current financial woes. Those who blame George W. Bush and his father choose the easy route. After all, “his” war cost us billions each day. But the threat of terrorism, although real and imminent, has been pushed into the recesses of our mass consciousness since 9-11, even more so since Obama’s election. No court or jury will punish those who have gained in our time of financial crises, but instead will exonerate those with enough money to circumnavigate around the legal system through endless appeals and expensive lawyers. No finger of blame can be righteously pointed at any individual as we are all guilty of complacency, of thinking that there is nothing that any of us can do to correct the problems that plague our American dreams. The culpability is ours, each of us, and we must own it before we can accept the responsibility of fixing those problems.
More and more American companies have chosen to move their business to a more tax-favorable location, outside the U.S. Greedy day-traders play short term games by buying low on Monday, only to sell with pennies of gain on Friday. Credit card fans teach their children to buy, without using cash, programs that show how to get free money grants from the U.S. government that never have to be paid back. Immigrants seem to know the “formula” for bilking the U.S. government: Sneak in, pop out a few kids to guarantee residency, receive welfare and food stamps paid for by the rest of us. Banks used “bail-out” monies to pay for extravagant Las Vegas parties instead of helping struggling mortgage payers to make a dependable home for their families. Those banks were already paid off by mortgage insurance companies for the homes that they had foreclosed at top-dollar gains, and then re-sold at half their worth to lower the value of neighborhood homes across America. The only ones able to buy homes now are visiting the same banks, which are now held prisoner by foreign-owned bonds that provide their solvency.
We all wait impatiently for someone else to provide a solution to the problems that plague mankind, but few of us will take the initiative to suggest alternatives to the ones we trust to do all the footwork. When the few who are interested enough to suggest solutions write to their government Congressmen, Assemblymen, Governors and Senators, their interest is sometimes rewarded by a form letter response followed by a prompt direction of their letters to the “circular file” (trash can). Who knows how many viable solutions to our many problems have been handled in this manner.
We all wait patiently in long lines for somebody else to solve our problems. There may be easier and more efficient ways to solve our problems, but we have become accustomed to waiting in line. If all the hours spent by we who stand in lines were instead used to research solutions, the answers to our problems might be more rapidly obtained.
In days past, a promise of payment appeared on paper money that stated an amount payable to the bearer of the note in silver or gold. Nowadays, no such promises are made on money because there is no real value or commodity to back up the stated value on the paper bills. This lack of real value has a dangerous psychological impact on those who use the “money” to purchase daily goods. When we see that the value of the paper we spend has an arbitrary and ever-changing ability to buy the things we need, then the confidence in and dependability of that money is diminished. We should have learned from Germany before World War II, where a postage stamp cost 500,000,000 (Five Hundred Million) Marks. Instead, we are apparently repeating the past mistakes despite the historical knowledge.
When a universally acknowledged commodity such as gold or silver is used to stabilize paper money which is directly exchangeable for those commodities, the economies that used such a system have flourished in past times. The problem today is that when a value is placed on a universally accepted commodity backing our coin and currency, that commodity soon becomes hoarded, and demand for it increases. When the targeted “demand value” is achieved, that commodity is unloaded on the market by its hoarders, and its perceived value which is dictated by “supply and demand” immediately drops. This problem is one reason why America went off the “Gold Standard” in 1933, and the “Silver Standard” in 1965. A copper-nickel standard doesn’t provide the confidence that rare metals have afforded, but nevertheless, it will soon follow gold and silver as a defunct representation of value for the same reasons. If aluminum is used, it will also become a meaningless commodity of perceived value, prone to the same weaknesses of the others. If plastic follows aluminum to represent value in our money, the same ends result. The only way to provide a real and stable measure for our coin and currencies’ value is by unanimous consent. Since promises to pay a note in silver, gold, diamonds, plastic, aluminum, uranium or whatever, causes instability. The only solution is to create a new unit of value that is not tied to any commodity or concrete thing. Our government has adopted this philosophy, and continues to print trillions of notes promising worth based upon nothing but our unanimous consent to back it up. Faith is the new standard for exchange.
President Obama has inherited a huge problem, undeniably the worst financial situation in our history due to the effects of inflation and our dependence on foreign products. The joke after World War II was any product ”Made in Japan”. America is now the joke.
We as a country have lived so long without the ability to make what we need to live our embellished lives, that the tools to do the myriad jobs of manufacturing seem to have all been sold to the ambitious third-world countries to which we are now dependant. The industrial greatness that America has exercised over the last 200 years has dissipated and has been absorbed by the smaller but more success-focused developing countries with the ability to make what we need for a lot less than we can.
Somewhere along the way, we have retired our ability, our knowledge, our genius and invention for the recliner and big-screen TV’s manufactured in Asia; And why not? It is certainly easier to go to Wal Mart and do the week’s grocery shopping than to grow your own corn.
We would rather watch the History Channel documentary on the greatness of America’s “Industrial Age” than go to the laboratory to work on alternative energy sources. Our world-wide competitors provide American TV with plenty of money to hawk their products to the American “recliner class” with calculated efficiency, endorsed and taught to them by the American media executives hoping for a future piece of foreign pie. Advertising; here is yet another skill delegated to foreign future powers, leaving Americans wondering, “Why did I get laid off? Oh well, time to watch the Beverly Hillbillies.”
In a country which has traditionally pointed the finger of blame to any available scapegoat, we are deficient now to spotlight any one person or reason for our current financial woes. Those who blame George W. Bush and his father choose the easy route. After all, “his” war cost us billions each day. But the threat of terrorism, although real and imminent, has been pushed into the recesses of our mass consciousness since 9-11, even more so since Obama’s election. No court or jury will punish those who have gained in our time of financial crises, but instead will exonerate those with enough money to circumnavigate around the legal system through endless appeals and expensive lawyers. No finger of blame can be righteously pointed at any individual as we are all guilty of complacency, of thinking that there is nothing that any of us can do to correct the problems that plague our American dreams. The culpability is ours, each of us, and we must own it before we can accept the responsibility of fixing those problems.
More and more American companies have chosen to move their business to a more tax-favorable location, outside the U.S. Greedy day-traders play short term games by buying low on Monday, only to sell with pennies of gain on Friday. Credit card fans teach their children to buy, without using cash, programs that show how to get free money grants from the U.S. government that never have to be paid back. Immigrants seem to know the “formula” for bilking the U.S. government: Sneak in, pop out a few kids to guarantee residency, receive welfare and food stamps paid for by the rest of us. Banks used “bail-out” monies to pay for extravagant Las Vegas parties instead of helping struggling mortgage payers to make a dependable home for their families. Those banks were already paid off by mortgage insurance companies for the homes that they had foreclosed at top-dollar gains, and then re-sold at half their worth to lower the value of neighborhood homes across America. The only ones able to buy homes now are visiting the same banks, which are now held prisoner by foreign-owned bonds that provide their solvency.
We all wait impatiently for someone else to provide a solution to the problems that plague mankind, but few of us will take the initiative to suggest alternatives to the ones we trust to do all the footwork. When the few who are interested enough to suggest solutions write to their government Congressmen, Assemblymen, Governors and Senators, their interest is sometimes rewarded by a form letter response followed by a prompt direction of their letters to the “circular file” (trash can). Who knows how many viable solutions to our many problems have been handled in this manner.
We all wait patiently in long lines for somebody else to solve our problems. There may be easier and more efficient ways to solve our problems, but we have become accustomed to waiting in line. If all the hours spent by we who stand in lines were instead used to research solutions, the answers to our problems might be more rapidly obtained.
In days past, a promise of payment appeared on paper money that stated an amount payable to the bearer of the note in silver or gold. Nowadays, no such promises are made on money because there is no real value or commodity to back up the stated value on the paper bills. This lack of real value has a dangerous psychological impact on those who use the “money” to purchase daily goods. When we see that the value of the paper we spend has an arbitrary and ever-changing ability to buy the things we need, then the confidence in and dependability of that money is diminished. We should have learned from Germany before World War II, where a postage stamp cost 500,000,000 (Five Hundred Million) Marks. Instead, we are apparently repeating the past mistakes despite the historical knowledge.
When a universally acknowledged commodity such as gold or silver is used to stabilize paper money which is directly exchangeable for those commodities, the economies that used such a system have flourished in past times. The problem today is that when a value is placed on a universally accepted commodity backing our coin and currency, that commodity soon becomes hoarded, and demand for it increases. When the targeted “demand value” is achieved, that commodity is unloaded on the market by its hoarders, and its perceived value which is dictated by “supply and demand” immediately drops. This problem is one reason why America went off the “Gold Standard” in 1933, and the “Silver Standard” in 1965. A copper-nickel standard doesn’t provide the confidence that rare metals have afforded, but nevertheless, it will soon follow gold and silver as a defunct representation of value for the same reasons. If aluminum is used, it will also become a meaningless commodity of perceived value, prone to the same weaknesses of the others. If plastic follows aluminum to represent value in our money, the same ends result. The only way to provide a real and stable measure for our coin and currencies’ value is by unanimous consent. Since promises to pay a note in silver, gold, diamonds, plastic, aluminum, uranium or whatever, causes instability. The only solution is to create a new unit of value that is not tied to any commodity or concrete thing. Our government has adopted this philosophy, and continues to print trillions of notes promising worth based upon nothing but our unanimous consent to back it up. Faith is the new standard for exchange.
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you seem to know a LOT abooout gold...
ReplyDeleteIm doing a project for a new use for gold but i can't think of any.
Could you help me?
Sorry to have taken so long, I didn't think anyone reads this.
ReplyDeletePrecious gold is so malleable that a mere ounce can be beaten into a sheet measuring an acre.
Aerospace engineers use gold foil to cover and protect sensitive electronics on the sunny side of communication satellites, because of its near perfect heat dissipation and electrical conduction properties.
Gold nanofilters remove poisonous toxins from drinking water (mercury sticks to gold).
Gold vapor deposited on a diamond substrate combine to make the world's fastest, most efficient (and expensive) transistor.
The heaviest noble metal, gold's gravity is strongest on a microscopic level. I met a geologist who believes that the very center of Earth's molten core is solid gold.
I hope this gives you some food for thought.
Jim