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Military Spending

ArlingtonDeac said:
Of course? Restricted drilling is the reddest of red herring in the sea.
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Restricting any economic activity is an economic inhibitor, seemingly by definition.

In northern West Virginia and throughout Pa., increased drilling activity has unquestionably been an economic boon to the region, with more to come. One estimate is that each paying Marcellus gas well drilled in the region will yield 1.3M taxable dollars to the region.

North Dakota is silly with drilling, to the point that some in the west are effectively homeless despite having jobs and money, and has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

And of course all of this benefits the economy in HQ locations like Oklahoma City (Chesapeake) and numerous places in Texas and LA. For a time, some in Caddo and Bossier Parish, LA were getting 25k/acre for their mineral rights. How is that not an economic benefit?

And for those of you touting environmentally friendly energy solutions, particularly as they relate to transportation, CNG should be at the top of your list. It's domestic, plentiful, cheap, and relatively easy. Only real obstacle is storage capacity for individual customers. But it's a real thing that's happening now despite sadly lacking government support.
 
KanhojiAngre said:
Restricting any economic activity is an economic inhibitor, seemingly by definition.

In northern West Virginia and throughout Pa., increased drilling activity has unquestionably been an economic boon to the region, with more to come. One estimate is that each paying Marcellus gas well drilled in the region will yield 1.3M taxable dollars to the region.

North Dakota is silly with drilling, to the point that some in the west are effectively homeless despite having jobs and money, and has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.

And of course all of this benefits the economy in HQ locations like Oklahoma City (Chesapeake) and numerous places in Texas and LA. For a time, some in Caddo and Bossier Parish, LA were getting 25k/acre for their mineral rights. How is that not an economic benefit?

And for those of you touting environmentally friendly energy solutions, particularly as they relate to transportation, CNG should be at the top of your list. It's domestic, plentiful, cheap, and relatively easy. Only real obstacle is storage capacity for individual customers. But it's a real thing that's happening now despite sadly lacking government support.
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As a former resident of Western PA, I have a bad feeling about how this will turn out for the land owners.
 
ArlingtonDeac said:
In certain sectors, but my point here was that wealthy investors can avoid those sectors. No one is arguing that unemployment being high is a positive.

And, don't forget, those companies of which you speak have taken austerity measures themselves -- that's why we have the high unemployment -- meaning less business is required to make the same profits for wealthy investors. Look at Ford.

In an era where blue collar jobs are evaporating and low-level white collar jobs can be outsourced, higher unemployment is not a product of the federal government's economic management but simply the new reality. And the wealthy are generally fine with that reality, because they can still profit despite higher unemployment, which hits the middle and lower classes, so long as they keep their taxes unnaturally low. This is the GOP economic platform.
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You really believe that, don't you? Wow.

Was 6-8% unemployment "the new reality" in the 70s? No. Just because it's been reality for the last 4ish years doesn't mean it will always be. Small business, as it always has been, is the answer to unemployment problems. Because sometimes, small businesses become big businesses.

But poor public education, lacking incentives to innovate or take risks, lack of bank lending (despite getting the most sweetheart of treatment from this administration) is not a recipe for spurring small business development. And that is why 8-10% unemployment seems like the new reality.
 
ONW said:
As a former resident of Western PA, I have a bad feeling about how this will turn out for the land owners.
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??

Also, google Utica shale oil for what's next in the region...moreso eastern and central Ohio. Everything old is new again. We're going back to Ohio (doo doo doodoodoo doooooo doo di doo di doo di).
 
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KanhojiAngre said:
??

Also, google Utica shale oil for what's next in the region...moreso eastern and central Ohio. Everything old is new again. We're going back to Ohio (doo doo doodoodoo doooooo doo di doo di doo di).
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Sure it creates jobs, but they are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Landowners are leasing out their property that will eventually make their land worthless.
 
KanhojiAngre said:
You really believe that, don't you? Wow.

Was 6-8% unemployment "the new reality" in the 70s? No. Just because it's been reality for the last 4ish years doesn't mean it will always be. Small business, as it always has been, is the answer to unemployment problems. Because sometimes, small businesses become big businesses.

But poor public education, lacking incentives to innovate or take risks, lack of bank lending (despite getting the most sweetheart of treatment from this administration) is not a recipe for spurring small business development. And that is why 8-10% unemployment seems like the new reality.
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Comparisons to the 1970s aren't very useful. The technological advances of the last thirty years make the anything pre-1985 useless as a template. I think outsourcing, technological expansion, and streamlining are creating a new corporate model that will remain leaner in terms of manpower.
And our population is not getting smaller.

I agree about small businesses, but the reality is that most small businesses fail. That's why pulling federal funding of economic programs meant to encourage small businesses -- and I'm not just talking tax breaks -- is a bad idea. Encouraging small businesses is a combination of available credit, market conditions, and a viable safety net should such businesses fail. This is not part of the GOP platform, beyond tax cuts.

But small business development is not going to plug a gap of upwards of 5% of our national workforce. Not under current competitive conditions. High unemployment is the new reality because big businesses will stay sleeker now that they've realized they can, and they are the major employers. You can't realistically replace the layoffs of a multi-national corporation like, say, GE, with small business development. You think Charlotte can reemploy 20K bank employees through small business growth? What about the 100K+ new graduates of white collar training programs that flood the market each year?
 
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ONW said:
Sure it creates jobs, but they are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Landowners are leasing out their property that will eventually make their land worthless.
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Why will it eventually make their land worthless?

We've had family land with a well on it for decades. The only residual effect was free gas for 30 some odd years. Hasn't effected the value of the property at all.

It isn't mountaintop removal mining...they drill a hole in the ground, they're there a few weeks, come back, frack it and they're here a couple more weeks, and that's it.

Natty wells dot the landscape here without incident.
 
ArlingtonDeac said:
Comparisons to the 1970s aren't very useful. The technological advances of the last thirty years make the anything pre-1985 useless as a template. I think outsourcing, technological expansion, and streamlining are creating a new corporate model that will remain leaner in terms of manpower.
And our population is not getting smaller.

I agree about small businesses, but the reality is that most small businesses fail. That's why pulling federal funding of economic programs meant to encourage small businesses -- and I'm not just talking tax breaks -- is a bad idea. Encouraging small businesses is a combination of available credit, market conditions, and a viable safety net should such businesses fail. This is not part of the GOP platform, beyond tax cuts.

But small business development is not going to plug a gap of upwards of 5% of our national workforce. Not under current competitive conditions. High unemployment is the new reality because big businesses will stay sleeker now that they've realized they can, and they are the major employers. You can't realistically replace the layoffs of a multi-national corporation like, say, GE, with small business development. You think Charlotte can reemploy 20K bank employees through small business growth? What about the 100K+ new graduates of white collar training programs that flood the market each year?
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My point was that extended periods of elevated unemployment in the 70s didn't make that "the new reality" even though I'm sure it was bandied about in those days as well.

I'm not really concerned about what the GOP platform is. I'm not affiliated with the party.

In the long run, I don't know why you can't replace those jobs. It's been done before. Big companies have folded before. New ones have started. The national population has kept growing and yet unemployment has stayed relatively low.

But like you said, it takes a favorable credit environment among other things, and right now we don't have that despite measures being taken to ensure banks are awash with money. That's wrong, and no one in either party is doing anything about. Obama might as well be a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, and the mainstream GOP (i.e. not Ron Paul) is no better.

It may in fact not be done and this unemployment situation may in fact become the new normal, but that doesn't mean it has to be and I am convinced it doesn't have to be.
 
Great post, and I mostly agree. But I think there reaches a point where population growth meets efficiency (through technology), and that point will be reached in the Internet era. Computerization has exploded the rate at which manpower because inefficient at the manufacturing level, and this latest downturn has shown that similar principles are at play in the white collar workforce. When an outsourced website can replace Barnes & Noble, you're looking at a new normal. I don't see this particular downturn as fitting the old cyclical models.

We need to create a new class of both white collar and blue collar jobs, and then retain them within our borders. Where do you see that expansion? Alternative energy could be viable, but not without massive government commitment. Good luck on that score, as oil companies control both parties. Beyond that, unless the largest corporation in our country - the federal government - continues to increase its hiring, we're going to see higher unemployment. And on one really wants to see that.
 
That's a heady question that I don't know if I can answer well...if I could, I probably wouldn't waste it on a message board rather than making millions with it.

But I've mentioned natural gas and think it still makes sense as an "alternative" energy source.

Technological innovation driven by our continuing advantage in higher education seems like a competitive advantage if it is given the fuel.

Healthcare technology is another peak, but work needs to be done to make it more affordable and thus, marketable outside the US.

A reasonable mass transit system that offers a real advantage over other methods of transport would be great, but then you're back to the oil lobby, I suspect, though other raw materials lobbyists should love it (and again, running it on natural gas might placate the oil folks, many of which are also invested in natty gas)

We continue to be able to attract some of the best and brightest from other countries with our university education system and many of them stay and become U.S. citizens. So obviously we're still doing some things right.

But we can't sustain ~1T a year deficit, 10% unemployment rates, decreasing public school effectiveness and increasing disincentives to work. It won't happen, and maybe people my age don't have much confidence that programs like social security will be around when our time comes even though we're paying into it.

AGain, I'm under no illusions that this is a great or even complete set of possible solutions. But one of the plusses the US economy has always had is that millions of heads are trying to find answers that will make money. Resigning ourselves to a "new normal" based on the acts of existing corporations seems like it takes the bat out of all those other people's hands...the Waltons, Krocs, Bezoseses, Gateseses, etc.

ETA: In light of your quite right post about incumbency and electioneering, perhaps an economic boon would be to have continuous elections! :) Corporations constantly pumping money to candidates that often gets spent at low levels of the economy.
 
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ONW said:
were too worried about political correctness to do the right thing....too worried about helping the little guy to slash his cheap loan benefits.

WTF are you talking about?
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We as a country were worried that the bottom end of the economic ladder was not getting access to legit banking needs. There was a genuine fear that it was racial inequality. The fear still exists today for "the unbankable".

But as a country seeking to solve a real problem, instead of vetting those ideas rationally, we went all politically correct and just made it easier for everyone to get loans. It was the late 1990s boom so who cared? We lowered standards and then risk by making them government backed. That lowering of standard and risk trickled right up the economic ladder until people thought risk was gone, fueled by new demand at the bottom made possible by those misguided policies. People were called "haters of the poor and racist" for questioning them...typical responses in our politically correct world.

That's what can happen when you don't question policies that "help the little guy". Not too helped now are they?
 
pourdeac said:
We as a country were worried that the bottom end of the economic ladder was not getting access to legit banking needs. There was a genuine fear that it was racial inequality. The fear still exists today for "the unbankable".

But as a country seeking to solve a real problem, instead of vetting those ideas rationally, we went all politically correct and just made it easier for everyone to get loans. It was the late 1990s boom so who cared? We lowered standards and then risk by making them government backed. That lowering of standard and risk trickled right up the economic ladder until people thought risk was gone, fueled by new demand at the bottom made possible by those misguided policies. People were called "haters of the poor and racist" for questioning them...typical responses in our politically correct world.

That's what can happen when you don't question policies that "help the little guy". Not too helped now are they?
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No offense, but you really have no understanding of this issue.
 
KanhojiAngre said:
ETA: In light of your quite right post about incumbency and electioneering, perhaps an economic boon would be to have continuous elections! :) Corporations constantly pumping money to candidates that often gets spent at low levels of the economy.
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In all seriousness, there's something to be said for this. That billion dollars that Obama is collecting will be pumped back into the economy, often at low levels.

Good talk!
 
WakeandBake said:
who puts this "government class" in office and influences their decision-making with expensive lobbying?
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The government class does by pushing concepts like political correctness and cradle-to-grave care. The media does by advancing candidates they want for whatever drives them. The wealthy do what they do. But the wealthy really don't care. They're going to make money no matter what.

That said, if we're going to give the gov trillions of $$ and direct control over trillions more, then they're going to find a way to extract a portion of it and influence what they can. So the more $$ we give the government, the more influence the wealthy have over government and our $$. Moreover, the larger the pot, the greater number of cracks to extract the $$ without any value in return (which is even worse).

IMO if you want the wealthy (or anyone else) to have less influence over government and the $$ it controls, there's only one way to do that: less government, and especially less centralized government. If it's less centralized, fraud is better controlled. If it's smaller, there's a lower percentage of the economy for the wealthy to influence that way.
 
PhDeac said:
Sadly the conservative response to that question is to pay the bottom third not to have a family.

Good post.
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Why aren't there jobs in the private sector for those people?
 
jhmd2000 said:
Why aren't there jobs in the private sector for those people?
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Because "those people" aren't competitive with technology and overseas workers in terms of how much it costs to hire them. Also businesses are doing the same with less instead of trying to do more.
 
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