Financing it is difficult, as a result of the legacy national debt of around $10 trillion (70% of GDP today versus 40% in 1935). But they haven't invented any new ways of dealing with it since the 1930s, so we're stuck in the same boat we were then: monetary policy is tapped out, export markets are drying up, investment sucks despite the lowest *real* corporate tax rates in the developed world, employment is falling along with GDP, etc.
-- Ed Huntress
Not that Wiki is the best source; but it's often the quickest and most concise. Here's a simple look at US debt history:
At the end of WWII, the prospects for rapid and dramatic growth were MUCH brighter than they are today. Other industrial economies in Europe and Asia had been wrecked by the war. The US was still small enough (in population and energy usage) that it could pretty much oil itself without relying on imports (OPEC didn't even exist yet). And many of the nations which now compete with us for shares in a global marketplace (e.g. S. Korea, China, India) were still insignificant in terms of their place at the table of large-scale trade and finance.
In other words, growth and expansion were easy.
That's not the case today. Growth is harder, slower, and less certain. And so is the likelyhood that our debt will ever be brought under control.
If you dig yourself into a 10' deep hole, and you have a 15' rope securely anchored at the top, then climbing out isn't impossible. If the hole gets to be 20' or 50' deep, however...
KG
That's a good analysis, Kirk, which leads to the next question: What alternative is there to going for a new wave of growth? That's where the spending on education and science come into play. It's a long shot. It's also the only shot.
Unfortunately, the alternative is to sit at the bottom of the hole with no rope at all -- and you can only jump five feet.
Several economists have said lately how impressed they are with Obama's guts to promote this program. But they tend to agree that he has no viable alternative. He's shooting for the moon: stimulating the economy, and simultaneously stimulating the things that have driven most of our rapid economic growth in the past.
What do you think? Are we up to it? Or have we run out of gas?
-- Ed Huntress
It's good to keep a sense of humor...
LOL! Oh, that's a good one. I missed that the first time around. Thanks for the chuckles.
-- Ed Huntress
I think the US has made the same mistake that most other "empires" in history have made. We reached the pinnacle of power - of control over our own destiny - and then we got fat and lazy. We're fat enough and lazy enough now that I sincerely doubt we're able to do what it would take to reverse the trend toward borrowing from the future to pay for today's luxuries.
If we really wanted to get healthy, and if it were possible for a government to get elected by promising to help us in that direction, we'd severely limit the amount of borrowing we do, and the way we do it, as a government and as individuals. We'd accept the need for a long and difficult period of rebuilding, and then emerge infintely stronger and more secure 20 or 30 years from now. We'd stop building and buying huge cars. We'd stop buying houses that are more than we need or can afford, and that overuse our land, energy, natural resources, road systems, and more. We'd simply refuse to deal with, or buy stock in, public companies whose top managers were paid in any way at all that wasn't tied directly to profits. We'd recall and discard politicians who enrich themselves or their friends with public money.
We'd begin to measure our wealth and well-being by how secure we are, and how much control we have over our futures, rather than by whether we own the newest, prettiest, most impressive and expensive versions of all the things we don't need anyway.
We'd invest in education, as you say; but ONLY in things that actually work. Spending billions of dollars to send every kid to college makes no sense until we've figured out how to teach every kid to read in the first and second grade.
With regard to science and technology: Developing new devices, like newer and smarter CNC machines, doesn't help if we can't find or train people who can program them, set them up, run them, and make things of value with them. Finding new ways to cure diseases, or to improve the quality of our lives, does little good if we can't afford the benefits, or if we come to believe that we're entitled to every pill and procedure our doctors want to sell us, even if that hurts our kids and our grandkids later on.
Most investments we'd make first as individuals, using our savings and our own energies to develop new ideas, and then turning those into small but solvent businesses, and then growing those businesses into major industries without being throttled by taxes, or by labor laws that protect the rights of floor sweepers while treating investors and entrepreneurs like "natural resources".
Larger, more expensive things, like exploring space or developing new medicines, would be done by companies that could attract investors by the promise of success, not by collecting grants of government money taken from taxpayers at gunpoint.
We'd begin building prisons. LOTS of prisons, so that those convicted of crimes would be taken OFF our streets, not just cycled back into our neighborhoods. Crime is one of the major reasons for urban sprawl, as anyone who can hold a pen and sign a mortgage tries to get his family out of the very places that were once the incubators of families, communities, and economic strength. Our cities are too dangerous, too expensive, and too hungry to kill and eat our children. Until that changes - until a young couple can buy a modest home, live there while they raise their kids in safety, and move only when they've earned and saved enough money that it makes sense to move, and to make room for the next young family - we'll never have enough suburbs, enough land, enough energy, enough roads, or enough time in our lives to help our kids with their homework, attend PTA meetings, hear what the local liars have to say at the city council meeting, etc.
We'd stop spending insane amounts of money and energy, and the lives of our kids, trying to build a democratic nation for someone else - anyone else - who happens to piss us off for any reason at all. We'd protect ourselves first, always, and lead by example rather than by pointless self-sacrifice. We'd honor our alliances; but we'd make those carefully, always making certain that our own interests were as well protected as those of our allies. We're NOT an empire. We're supposed to be world leaders. There's a difference.
We'd do all these things and more, aggressively, purposefully, with leaders who'd reject JFK's innane slogan, and would help us see ways that we could do for our country, and our country could do for us, at the same time.
So, to answer your question: No, I don't think we're up to it. I don't think we have been since the end of WWII, when we finished doing something important and difficult, came home to rest and reward ourselves, and then got addictied to rest and rewards. My best guess is that it will take another serious, ugly depression to wipe out all the pretense of wealth, and our imagined immunity to the consequences of our actions, and bring us back (painfully, unwillingly) to a sense that what we get out of life really is connected to the choices we make, now and in the future.
I have no way of knowing if the present economic crises is the beginning of that, or of we'll "succeed" in postponing it a little more, and in letting our kids deal with our mistakes. But I can't see this country doing the right things without some major and inescapable reasons. Hunger and cold are tough teachers; but few ignore their lessons.
KG
Reinforcing yet again the folk wisdom "The first thing to do when you are in a hole is stop digging."
This being the case why don't we take their shovels away?
Two suggestions:
(1) Reinstate the "up tick" rule [SEC 10a-1] by law rather than regulation with criminal penalties for violation, especially for repeated violation, including heavy fine, imprisonment and suspension from trading in any market.
(2) Prohibit the writing of new CDS [credit default swap] derivatives unless adequate loss reserves are posted, preferably in the form of cash or treasury securities deposited with a third party.
Water appears to be pouring in faster than it can be bailed out. The conclusion is that the leaks *MUST* be fixed or the boat will sink.
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
Turns out, 6901... But I was wrong. there are thrust bearings on the head. Can you tell I'm not the designer?!?
Customer just told me another interesting tibdit... They are breaking drills (twisting them apart in the bushing) so there is definitly a set-up problem on their end... We shall see!
Regards, Joe Agro, Jr. (800) 871-5022
01.908.542.0244 Automatic / Pneumatic Drills:
Yep.
Nope.
Thus the original dilema that seems to have been solved. New dilema is finding out what is wrong with their bushing or clamping set up (not sold by me - whew!)
If it matters, I was finally told the model of the drill press - Jet GHD-20PFT
Regards, Joe Agro, Jr. (800) 871-5022
01.908.542.0244 Automatic / Pneumatic Drills:
There are many areas of huge domestic US potential such as alternative energy sources, syn fuels, bio plastics, advances in ceramics/cement, hydroponic low-water consumption agriculture, low cost/high durability housing, and a return to domestic high value added manufacturing. It should be noted that in many cases the "education" required is *NOT* 4 or more years of college with a baccalaureate [or higher] degree, but rather some advanced training at the post secondary level [community college / votech] with supervised OJT.
As Tonto is said to have remarked to the Lone Ranger as the
10,000 Apaches closed in -- "what you mean 'we' white man?"The huge majority of American are more than up to it, the problem being that our self appointed leadership is not, some because of timidity, most because of senility [even at 40 and 50] and the shared hallucination that "we are living in the best of all possible worlds," (so what's to change).
Another major problem is that as soon as any progress is made, someone hyjacks the profits and/or processes, increases overhead, increases nonproductive head count, off shores production, etc. so despite enormous effort and innovation by the majority, no net societal progress results.
There appears to be two parallel and mutually reinforcing "solutions":
(1) Prohibit existing companies from participating in the new [competing] economic activities. If they could contribute they would already done so. For example, Exxon-Mobile, Conoco, Duke, etc. should be forbidden to participate in any of the alternative energy projects, such as geothermal, solar, wave, wind, as [passive] sabotage/resistance is far more likely than assistance.
(2) Absolute dollar and relative market share limits should be established and rigidly enforce on the new enterprises, with "roll ups" and "stealth chains" forbidden. As we should have learned to our sorrow "too big to fail" is "too big." This should also be imposed on the existing economic segments as practical, under the existing Sherman, Clayton and Robinson-Patman anti-trust acts.
If we expect people to get "an education," then some positive benefit [other than "try it you'l like it" or "its good for you"] must be seen for the person getting the education. There are finite supplies of money and time available to everyone, and the time and money spent on education can't be used to drink beer and party. ==>Most people do not have making their boss rich at the top of their list of life goals.
============== Indeed, but only if the policy makers get hungry and cold. As indicated in another response, this is *THE* major danger with insulated/isolated elitist "leadership."
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
Too_Many_Tools wrote: >
What to get an education for? For the very good reason that you don't know, and can't know, what you'll need to know in the future.
Please note that Ed and I both used the word "education". Not job training. That's a whole different thing, and usually so short-sighted that it contributes to our problems, rather than helping to solve them.
Education isn't about the things you learn as much as it's about the inescapable need for learning, and the most fundamental skills that all future (life-long) learning requires.
When I was in high school (a good school, btw; and I was a pretty good student) I learned how to use a computer. First, you power up the teletype. Then you dial the appropriate phone number, and place the phone's handset into the modem cups. Then you carefully thread your paper program tape into the teletypes's reader. And so on. I also learned how to use a slide-rule, and how to change the font-ball on an IBM Selectric typewriter.
When I was in college, I learned about the glorious future of nuclear energy, and how the world would soon be filled with clean, safe, non-polluting reactors that would provide as much as 90% of our total energy needs.
When I was in college the second time, I learned a lot about drafting, the difference between paper drawings and mylars, blueprint machines and Diazo's, and like that.
When I got my first job in a machine shop, I learned how to run a W&S turret lathe, and why it was so important to put white lead on the (dead) center when using an OD grinder.
Those things were "skills" of the kind that job training includes. Today, long before my working life is over, every one of those things is useless. People are probably reading this right now and shaking their heads about how impossibly old and obsolete I must be.
But I also got an education. I learned how to read. That's a skill, of course; but it's also much more. Once I learned that most basic, most fundamental thing, even in its simplest form, I had immediate access to every single idea, opinion, fact, or communicable skill, that had ever been put on paper, or would ever be put on a microfilm, a floppy disc, a hard drive, a CD, a DVD, or a flash drive, or whatever.
I learned some rudimentary science, which didn't mean I could build a spacecraft or cure cancer. But it gave me the start I needed in terms of discipline, methodology, and thought processes, which are the root of the kinds of science that DOES build spacecraft and cure terrible diseases.
I learned arithmetic, and just enough of other kinds of math - algebra, geometry, trigonometry, statistics - that I understood there was more to learn, and was equipped to learn it, and could know how and why math is so important in so many parts of a technological world.
I learned about history, and literature, and philosophy, which meant that I had a basic grasp of how other people have lived and thought, and how those things go together, and how I was a part of something huge and ongoing.
And I learned how to learn.
After that, learning how to sharpen a drill bit, or run a CNC machine, or write software for a Windows computer, were all within my capacity. If I'd learned only skills, I'd be helpless.
Education comes first, in its most basic forms. After that, an educated indiviual can make his/her own choices about what to learn, what job or career to pursue, and how to invest time and energy wisely. Without an education, or with only job skills, the world is a very cruel and rapidly changing place.
Human children need to get an education for the same reason baby birds need to learn how to fly, or baby tigers need to learn how to hunt
- even if they don't know where they're flying to, or what prey they might encounter. It's a matter of survival.
KG
Isolated/insulated elitism isn't the problem; but it's a very clear symptom. People (real, actual, non-elite members of the proletariat) put their money into CitiBank, and took the advice that Morgan Stanley's investment councelors offered, and signed the documents for mortgages they couldn't afford, and voted for the "leaders" who told the best lies. If they hadn't done those things, and countless others like them, there wouldn't be any isolated/insulated elite. There'd only be unemployed bankers, stock-brokers, and politicians, who'd need to find honest work if they wanted to eat.
KG
There is no way to have a .875" spacing with 6901 bearings. The 6801 bearings are 24mm OD, So the Minimum spaciing is .945" Thanks for the puzzle..
That's a keeper. It should go on a schoolhouse wall somewhere. Or in a letter to parents who send their kids to college to learn a job skill.
-- Ed Huntress
----------- Thanks for the Paul Harvy memorial "rest of the story."
Unka' George [George McDuffee]
------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).
You learned how to learn..and how to look up the answers to questions you had. And you took an interest in things besides the Glass Teat, and your own immediate needs.
Kids are not..not taught how to learn, or to look up stuff, or to even balance a checkbook.
They come out of school incredibly self centered, butt ignorant and provincially self centered and short sighted.
The self centered and short sighted can be atributed to being kids...but the rest ...should have been taught at an early age.
A perfect example is the growth of Rent To Own stores. Anyone with half a functioning brain knows they are a rip off of the worst kind..yet they prosper and branch out.
A young friend recently needed a washing machine. I told him Id help fix his old one, or help him find a decent used one. Nope..had to have a new one. Rent To Own.
The other day he called me up, depressed, told me he cant afford his new washer. I laughed at him. Now he is going to have a repo on his credit history. And have to buy a good used washer. Which I already found him for less than one months rent to own.
Part of the economic problem we have today..is because far too many people are utterly ignorant of money. They dont need to be brokers..but the ability to balance a statement at the end of the month is critically important.
But...I suspect folks are going to get really well educated in the next couple years..because easy credit is going to go Phiftt! and with less disposable income...they are going to have to live within their means...or become homeless.
Expect to see a rise in drug use, and boozers in the next couple years, and an BIG increase in crime rates.
I didn't want to snip all that great stuff, but the last two paragraphs will do for a response: I disagree. I think we are up to it.
It will be very painful and there will be plenty of stops and starts, misdirections and corrections, but I think the whole financial system's fragility is recognized now and it gradually is being understood for what it is -- a house of cards. And we will respond constructively. We have the resources and I believe we have the right attitude, overall. I don't doubt that we have the abilities.
-- Ed Huntress
I sincerely hope you're right.
KG
It is clearly evident that I'm not the guy who layed out the head, eh?
I should get the engineering drawings before I make any more guesses about the unit...
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