Where's the green revolution investment bubble?

A friend pointed out an article in the lampoon newspaper "The Onion" that reports how the US investors are desperately looking for another bubble to invest in like the Internet, real estate and sub-prime mortgage bubbles among others. See link here: http://http//www.theonion.com/content/news/recession_plagued_nation_demands

While this article is a parody, this is really how our economy works since the powers that be in the US are phasing out the manufacturing sector and some of the service sectors in our economy. Our economy just seems to be one big Ponzi scheme or three-card monte game.

The next bubble was supposed to be the green revolution, an economy that revolves around alternate energy sources. This was one of the platforms that Obama based his presidential election campaign on.

This for some reason has not taken place and the green revolution doesn't seem to be anywhere in sight.

Sure there are all electric cars coming to market like the Nissan Leaf, and Honda has a hydrogen version of the Accord but there is no re-fueling infrastructure to support them. I also saw a report on Nova about new thin solar panel cells and at the time the television program was produced the company that was manufacturing them, United Solar Ovonic, had a two year back log. Now by checking out Google News I have found that this company is laying off workers because their supply is surpassing demand. This doesn't make any sense. If the US Government was really committed to the green revolution this is where they should step in and help create a green infrastructure of electric and hydrogen fueling stations and help green companies like United Solar Ovonic find a market for their product.

This is not happening and investors are not coming to the rescue, because they do not see the money making potential in green technologies. But why? Because as I have stated here before, I think investors and the US government know that whatever green technology comes about oil will be sure to undersell it and ruin it. Even if it green ventures never become truly commercially successful, they could at least help the economy by driving the price of oil way down. This in itself would be a big help to the economy, but investors are not in the altruism business they are in the money making business therefore it will never happen. But at least government should be stepping in to help out, but they are not.

This also is why you cannot expect a free market to operate altruistically, and you need government to step in to be the altruist, but they cannot because big business keeps their hands tied through lobbying. Investors are not going to get the green revolution going because they are afraid they won't make any money and government hasn't stepped in to make sure that the right thing is done.


It is all up to the US Government to get the green revolution bubble going. This should be the priority over having another bailout for failing US banks and business, and it is not only the economy at stake, it is the environment as well.

Tax caps spell a slow death for government services

I heard NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg at a press conference once say something like "Everyone wants great service [from their city government] but no one wants to pay for it. "

This must be true for the the proponents of tax caps, who want to put the slow kill on local government spending. A much better course of action would be for municipalities to post their incoming revenue and budgets on the Internet therefore citizens can see where money is being spent, and make sure that waste and abuse by officials are kept under control. But of course politicians would rather push tax caps because they probably have something to hide.

Tax caps are big in Massachusetts. They limit the amount of property and school taxes a municipality can impose. As a result of tax caps, Massachusetts schools and public services like libraries, police, firefighters, public works and recreation programs are slowly being shrunk into nothing.

Some tax caps are set below the Consumer Price Index and therefore the municipality cannot even attempt to keep up with inflation and services must be cut.

What surprises me is that this trend appears to the worst in the most affluent and educated communities. Massachusetts is the state that spawned the Kennedys for goodness sake, I always thought it was full of liberal intellectuals not right-wing yahoos. Newton, MA, a very wealthy suburb of Boston, recently cut city services through tax caps. This included closing four branch libraries. The branch libraries eventually re-opened staffed solely by volunteers. Soon they will need volunteer police and sanitation workers. I'm assuming they already have volunteer firefighters, but usually wealthy people are more concerned with making sure there mansions are safe from the threat of fire than they are with any other type of municipal services, so I bet the firefighters are still paid.

This trend will continue throughout the country as jobs continue to move off shore, and the rich being the only ones with money refuse to pick up the tab through taxation. If someone in your community starts the rally for tax caps it would be a good idea to counter attack buy starting a movement to make your local government's budget available online so everyone can see where the money goes, and then help local politicians make a decision as to what services need to be cut or if there is really a need to raise taxes.

A single payer plan may be better than government subsidized insurance

I think that a government sponsored health care plan will only drive up medical and insurance costs. We really need the single payer system that UK and Canada have. It has its drawbacks but like with our Medicare system, once doctors realize that Uncle Sam is paying the bill they are going to try to squeeze out as much money as they can get. This will drive up premiums across the board. Remember doctors are smarter than you and me, that’s why they went to medical school and you didn’t. If there are angles in working the system, they are going to find them

If you are getting Uncle Sam involved for subsidized care, the industry needs to be heavily regulated with price controls. Back in 1993 when the Clintons had their proposed health care reform on the table, there was talk of price caps for health care. I remember some representative from the physicians lobby stating on television that no other industry in the United States has pricing caps and guidelines, and then why should the health care industry have them. I desperately wanted someone to say because no other industry has such a direct impact on human life. You need to have price controls to allow people to live and not be made penniless through jumbo health care bills, as many Americans are. Of course the media didn’t bother to come back with that or any other opposing statement.

The scary thing about the single payer plan is that health care can be rationed out, and that the older you get, the longer you have to wait for a medical procedure. This is where having private hospitals on top of a single payer system comes in. Even with the single payer system there will still be a health insurance industry and plenty of opportunities for doctors to make money. You will have to have insurance for when you can’t get service quickly enough from the single payer system. You will have to seek care from a private hospital when you feel it is a life or death situation and the public system is not responding quickly enough. Therefore for the people who can afford it, you will have to pay for extra insurance just in case you can’t get the care you need from a single payer system.

Although I am really for health care reform, I believe it should be done with caution and a lot of regulation. Even though the single payer plan has its drawbacks, it is a better plan than a Federal sponsored insurance program put out there to compete with private insurance. The federal insurance plan could work as well, but not without strong price controls and caps.

The way tax refunds should be given out..

Taiwan like the rest of the world is also having its own economic crisis. Their government's stimulus package gives tax rebates in the form of use-them-or-lose-them vouchers which must be spent on goods or services. They cannot horde their rebate money away, which is what most rich people do when they are given any type of tax break.

This is a much more sensible way to stimulate the economy. The money will actually get out there and do the job it's supposed to do, not sit in a bank where it will never see the light of day again.

I was thinking that the US government could even issue bonds where the quarterly interest is paid out in the form of vouchers that must be spent. This would allow money to be continuously pumped into the economy.

Tax payers should have the right to see exactly how their tax dollars are being spent.

I think anti-government people think government officials squander their tax dollars on personal matters among other things. They are afraid of government corruption. There is no doubt that government corruption does exist, but perhaps not on the level that the right wing yahoos think or say there is.

One way to combat this is to give the tax payers an open window on where their tax dollars are being spent by using the Internet. All federal, state, and local government agencies should be required publish their budgets on the World Wide Web in an easy to follow format, and perhaps with a more detailed spread sheets that accountant watchdogs can scrutinize. Tax payers should have the right to trace where there tax dollars go, and the Internet can make this all possible.

I'm surprised that no one is demanding this, at least not loudly enough for me to have heard about it. [Actually there was an act passed by Congress to sort of allows for budget posting on the web, but I don't think it has been very effective] I am sure there are many politicians who don't want this. Perhaps they fear that certain projects would never get funded if the public knew how much they cost, or perhaps the right wing yahoos are right and they are doing illicit things with our money.

No place for middle class people to save their money.

With the stock market on a downward spiral, and interest rates very low there really is no safe place for working class people to save their money and get a decent return. Even the bond market is not that safe. When Wall Street had a meltdown back in September I had several bond funds that also took a big plunge. There was such a panic that people were selling off their bond funds, even when everyone knows that bond funds are usually safe havens in troubled times. It was very scary. Luckily the bond market recovered and the funds climbed up to normal levels, but it’s impossible to find a safe investment with a return over .05 percent.

A lot of the books that help you plan your retirement ask that you put away a substantial sum of money and are expecting you to have a rate of return of 5% or higher that’s just not possible without taking risks these days.

Well there is always real estate to invest in. My parents home is worth about 20 times what they originally paid for it forty years ago, but the even real estate market is not stable, and with all of the jobs disappearing, I doubt there will be many people looking for homes anytime soon.

Federal Reserve must go for broke and gradually raise interest rates to a more reasonable level. The interest rate was lowered to keep the stock market going, but that’s just one aspect of the economy. We need to adopt a new interest rate philosophy that includes the middle class American that needs to save for his or her retirement.

Population control: The ultimate way to go green!

From Al Gore to your local school children the pressure to conserve resources, recycle, and preserve life on this planet is coming at us from many directions. I think Mother Earth is shouting at us herself with the depleted ozone layer and the melting ice caps; scary stuff.

What no one ever calls for anymore is population control. This seemed to be a concern in the late sixties and early seventies, but it has vanished completely from the media and pop culture. Does anyone remember the movie "Soylent Green"? This seems to be a taboo topic, perhaps because it goes against God's command in the bible, to be fruitful and multiply. The Catholoic Church and Right-to-Life conservative Christians are not really helping things either these days.

And while some countries like Japan and Italy are reporting population shirnkage, coutries like the good old USA are picking up their slack.

I realize that it is moraly wrong to take away peoples' reproductive rights (but don' t tell that to the mainland Chinese with their great "one child" policy). But you can give them incentives not to have children. For example let's take away the income tax deduction we give to people with children. Let's stop giving welfare moms more money with each child they have.

I would go as far as giving school tax refund and other government sanctioned incentives to people who are voluntarily steralized and have no children. It's a radical idea that will surely be faced with great oposition, but not really for the reasons that you might think.

You see the upper class, the wealthy people of the world, understand the basic laws of supply and demand, if the supply of laborers goes down then the cost of employing them will go up. This will then cause inflation to go up which means that rich people will have to pay more for their yatchs, mansions, and luxury cars among other things.

However it is a much greater cost if the earth is destroyed and man, more than any other force on this Earth, has proven to be its great destroyer. We must listen to Al Gore and other green proponents, but we must also consider the fact that the best way to preseve this world's resources is to use less of them, and the best way to do this is to have fewer people.

Death: The great equalizer

Death and the Miser by Hieronymus Bosch

Benjamin Franklin said "Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."

Well, we all know conservative rich people all hate taxes and they will do their darnedest not pay them. But try as they might, and no matter how much money they have, the truth is that they are going to die, just like you and me. They might live longer or more fulfilling lives than you or me, but there is no guarantee of that.

The thing that rich people don't want you to realize is that in reality because of death, in the end, when it comes right down to it, they are no better than you, and no one is really better than anyone else. Perhaps there will be rewards in an afterlife if you lived a good life and you did God's will, but I don't think many rich people believe that. Some religions and cultures don't even believe in an afterlife.

And I don't think many wealthy conservative Christians really believe in an afterlife. If they did they would be much more in to sharing their wealth for the common good. I believe they are just going through the motions. They probably see Christianity as a tool to control other people, so they can make sure their lives stay under control.

In John Dean's book "Conservatives without Conscience" he tells of sociopaths called "Double High Authoritarians" who hold everyone to a high standards of behavior, while they themselves often misbehave and consider themselves to be a above the law. Tele-Evangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker were two examples of this.

Well, now you now why rich people are so selfish, and why government must force them to share through taxes.

Obama may not increase taxes on the rich.

President-Elect Obama's administration is already planning an economic stimulus package that will give the middle class additional tax cuts and leave the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans alone through 2010.

Why do people still think that trickle-down economics theory works? If you let wealthy people hang on to their money that's exactly what they will do. They hoard it, that's what they love to do. They won't spend it, and it definitely won't trickle down to the poor and middle class.

I think the government should start taxing wealthy individuals' net worth, that's all the assets that you have after you factor in your liabilities. And how much money do you think you need to live comfortably? I think the government should start adding on taxes on individuals with a net worth of over 5 million dollars. Income tax just taxes what we make each year
While we're at it, let's make it illegal for Americans to keep money offshore. This is how rich people avoid paying taxes on interest.

Also there is controversy over raising corporate taxes in such bad economic times. I think corporations have to be given breaks only when they show that they are creating jobs for Americans and not cutting them. There should also be tax penalties for companies that have CEOs and other high-ranking employees that make an inappropriately large salary as compared to other employees of their company. Let's force corporate America to spread the wealth around within their own ranks.

Oil's price is whatever the market will sustain!

I read somewhere, I'm not sure it was a reliable source, so I will not try to find it, that the supply of oil is really so abundant that gasoline prices could be a lot cheaper, like ten-cents-a-gallon cheap. I'm sure you can find out more on your local conspiracy website. With the big dip in oil prices recently, I'm starting to believe this.

I also believe that whatever "green" sources of alternate energy make it to the mass market (if they every do) oil will manage to drop its prices to undersell it and undermine any fledgling new energy business.

And, I think high prices that we have been paying for the past few years are in no way connected to higher demand from China and other countries with growing industries, but they are connected to our involvement to Afghanistan and Iraq. This current dip in prices could be a reward for electing President Obama who will hopefully establish better diplomatic relationships with the Middle East.
Just a theory.

Free-trade's mission: Destroy the middle class!

Free trade is yet another tool that is being used to wipe-out the middle class. It is very simple with out any tariffs or restrictions on trade, multinational corporations will simply move production plants, factories and services from one country to another, wherever they can get efficient labor at the cheapest price. Right now China is the manufacturing hot spot, but when the Chinese start to develop a middle class, and start walking around like they are entitled to middle class perks like eating three meals a day with ample snacking in between, the multinationals will pull out of China and find a cheaper place to set up shop, let's say India or Argentina for argument's sake.

Free-trade proponents have made the term "protectionism" into a dirty word. By protectionism, I mean protecting your domestic businesses through tarrifs and balanced trade polices.
In his book "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism "Cambridge ecomonist, Ha-Joon Chang makes a strong argument for protectionism by illustrating how historicaly the United States and the United Kingdom both became wealthy nations through protectionist policies. And he goes on to show how his home country of South Korea has used protectionist policies within the last forty years to greatly improve its economic condition, making it a powerhouse producer in the world market.

Free-trade will make a world of poor people with a few temporary middle-class citizens wherever the main manufacturing is going on.

The United States has had the rug pulled from under it, and we will be expected to buy Chinese products until we can no longer afford to do so. When we are reduced to a poor nation like China or India once were, then at some point manufacturing and services will move back here, and then the whole cycle starts over again.

Why are the upper class so dead against social medicine? Answer: They want you to die.

Mr. Middle Class: Do you expect us to pay exorbitant fees for health care?
Upper Class: No Mr. Middle Class, I expect you to die!

Well perhaps this isn't the best paraphrasing of the famous lines from the James Bond movie, Goldfinger, but why would the upper class be against social medicine? Because they want to make sure that the masses don't live very long. After we serve our purpose, they want us to die. They do not want us to enjoy a happy retirement and use the Social Security System that is already on very shaky ground thanks to the past polices of Ronald Reagan.

Social medicine would only ensure that middle class and poor people would live longer, and we can't have that. They'll keep expecting to get Social Security, and then eventually the rich would have to pick up the bill, and they of course never want to do that.

What kills me is that the only Social medicine proposal in recent history was the Clintons' 1993 plan which was quickly shot down, and no has come back to propose some type of middle ground.

I think we could at least have a program where regular check-ups and preventive medicine are paid for through a social program, and all other procedures have to be paid for through insurance either provided for by an employer or paid for out of pocket by the individual.
Another step to take would be to socialize medical schools to make sure that there are enough doctors, nurses and health care workers to go around. The increased supply of medical professionals will insure that medical costs remain under control. You see it all comes back to supply and demand.

Keeping hospitals and health insurers non-profit would also be a big help. The trend has been the opposite making hospitals and health insurers for profit, because the rich realize that most people will pay for their lives, and pay for them dearly.

Another move in the right direction would be make a law that says if it's called health insurance and you're a licensed medical professional you must accept it. If you don't you loose your license. No excuses! No more of this finding doctors that accept your insurance plan. This would be a big help to millions of Americans that already have insurance. I'm sure there is a physicians lobby that works against ideas like these. Of course health insurance plans should be ordered to pay bills quickly and within a certain percentage of the amount billed.

I'm not sure why politicians are so out of touch with reality that they cannot even take little steps in the right direction like the ones I mentioned above. There must be a very powerful physicians lobby as well as the pharmaceutical lobby. The only thing we can do is write our elected representatives, and hope they have enough of a heart to help out the working families of this country.

Give us you poor, tired, huddled masses yearning to work for below minimum wage...

I realize that immigration has helped the United States become a great nation. And aside from the Native Americans we are all either immigrants or descendants of immigrants. My ancestors immigrated here at the turn of the century. Three sets of my great-grandparents and one grandparent came to the United States for opportunities that where not available in their own country.

But today, as more and more manufacturing jobs are sent overseas, and many service jobs are being off-shored opportunities for potential new Americans are drying up. Today the main goal of immigration ( and perhaps it was always its main goal ) is to keep labor costs down.
It all boils down to simple supply and demand. As long as there is an excess labor supply, employers can keep labor costs down because there will always be many people competing for the same position. As soon as competition drops and the demand for labor increases, employers will keep having to pay higher and higher wages. This will take more money out of the pocket of the few wealthy employers and spread it around to the many downtrodden workers.

This is why they cannot close the Mexican border. If the border is closed they will have to find Americans to do the jobs nobody wants to and ::gasp:: pay them at least minimum wage, maybe even higher where this is a real shortage of workers for less desirable jobs.

This is also why in the North American Free Trade Agreement Bill (NAFTA) there is a provision for special work VISAs, TN VISAs, for many professional jobs for people from Canada and Mexico. Professions included in this provision include just about all medical professions, scientists, university professors, architects, accountants and librarians. By making it easy for professionals from other countries to immigrate here this provision has also been helping to keep supply high and labor costs down. [Authors note: Actually for the medical profession it is beneficial to the middle class if we can import as many professionals as possible, since we seem to have not chance at getting social medicine anytime soon, and health insurance costs increase much more quickly than other living expenses. Many more doctors would mean more competition and this should drive medical costs down. Doctors won't let this happen because they count themselves among the elite upper class and it is probably why medical costs increase so quickly because they want to keep up with the wealthy Joneses.]

I have seen many articles in the past describing Japan's great concern over their shrinking and aging population. I would think that this would be regarded as a blessing to a nation that has traditionally been overpopulated. So overpopulated that in World War II they started to try to forcably aquire land from mainland China, as well as other locations in the Pacific, remember Pearl Harbor?

What the articles fail to report is that one of the main reasons they are afraid of the shrinking population is that the demand for workers will far out weigh the supply which will drive labor costs sky high, and might even require them to open their borders to foreigners.
The bottom line is immigration's main purpose appears to be to keep labor costs down, and until Americans understand this is not always a good thing, our borders will always remain opened.