A Vicious Circle

Hello my friends, I have an idea that I wanted to post here.

Well I deeply support good democracy, and at one point I think that the U.S. and several other first world countries had it right.

I think there is a problem today that has caused several issues that end up feeding on each other, the problem is the media, specifically news media.

I don't know if I support free speech, and that troubles me, the idea behind free speech I really like and support, but certain things need to be done with responsability, like newscasting, and I think that they havent been responsible in that job, I think they have been more worried about reporting news that are showy and will attract attention instead of doing the responsible thing and reporting responsibly.

Now the title of this thread is vicious circle, but to explain this vicious circle I decided to go with the media, I could have started anywhere else but this issue touch on politicians and the economy, and how the 3 are linked and form this vicious circle that I want to put here.

First a little bit of rough history (this is rough, dont expect specifics of any kind) in WW2 the U.S. made a lot of factories to produce tanks, ammo, jeeps, ships, etc etc. when the war ended all this factories were available to be retooled and put into civilian production, this gave jobs to the american people, the american people won money, and they could spend that money into stuff, forming a good circle, since a lot of the money was moving internally, the taxes were there, this allowed the government to go into the cold war space race with some confidence, now I jump a couple of decades to the 70's and 80's, by this point all those factories are old, a lot of companies needed to retool and sometimes tear down and rebuild a new factory to continue generating money, and keep themselves in the market, but by this time TV is a really big phenomenon, the impression that I got from reading articles of that era and seeing some of the tv reports, is that the media was finding that they were very powerfull that they could defy the government and make the government adjust its policies, it happened with the vietnam war, (or at least it looks like that).

Now a lot of people dislike having factories specially old factories, I saw some reports of the TV pretty much saying no to the factories, this companies needed to retool and possibly remake some of those factories, and at that point the best solution since the TV was against them was to make the problem move away, move it to a country where they could make those factories and where the american people wouldn't see it, this decision and the power of TV is what started this vicious circle, because after the factories goes away less american people receive money, so they spend a little bit less, instead of paying americans for the work they are paying people from other countries, that is money that is going out, the politicians cant stop it, because the TV want the factories away and because the rich that contribute to their campaigns also want the factories there, because they can make more profit, this has been getting worse and worse for the last 30 years.

Today (specifically during the last year), apart from all the economics trouble that the U.S. has, I have also read some data and some articles that talk that if the countries of Asia, decide to close the doors, they could bankrupt U.S. if the best case scenario they say it will cause a great depression, worse case well they don't call them doomsayers for nothing, the millionaires and owners of companies dont want to lose the profit, the countries that have the factories dont want to lose them, the TV needs money and the ads that some of the companies that have factories outside is what keeps the money coming in, so talking about them is not something that they want to do, and the politicians dont want to touch the millionaires or the TV, because the millionaires wont give them money for reelection or to be a lobbyist after their term finish, and because the TV can destroy them.

Also while I cannot give an informed opinion about obamacare, for me it smell like a desperation move into making the U.S. government a welfare state instead of an equal opportunity state, no proof about this and as I said dont have too much info about it.

Why I see as a Solution, have a group of politicians that dont mind selfdestructing their carrers for their country, pass a resolution that anything that is not manufactored in the U.S. and its imported should pay an import tax of 1 million dollars per microgram of load (raw materials are excempted).

This will cause the Sh**storm of the century, but with a good PR management by the TV crews, you could have all those companies that had factories outside, building factories inside the U.S. with the most modern technology to reduce ecological impact, that will mean lots of job in construction to begin with, and as factories gets completed more jobs for manufacturing, all of what is manufactured in the U.S. will be sold in the biggest market who is in desperate needs of those goods, The U.S., this obviously will have an impact on taxes since more americans working and more americans expending means more taxes, the profit of the companies will be lower, but someone will need to bite the bullet, and I think that reducing the margin of profit is the lesser evil.

Why I fear is that if the government of the U.S. continues this way either the Union will break and this will cause a lot of turmoil, countries in the middle east that hate each other will go to war and since the U.S. doesnt exist anymore they will go at it with frenetic fanaticism, or the U.S. will move in a direction that will corrupt their government, what I dont know but I shudder thinking of the states taking a direction like one of the south american countries in the last century, those countries didnt have nukes, the U.S. have them.

I know that this view of the problem is simplistic and my solution is also simplistic, but I have reduce the problem to simple terms, I expect that whatever happens there will be a lot of difficulties, and that is not going to be easy, as several authors of military fantasy has written, that something is simple doesnt mean its going to be easy.

Also I know there are hundreds of related issues, but you know I like to think like if this was a boat, first we need to repair the hole in the hull and keep the boat afloat before worrying about if the stove is functioning or not, because for sure a functioning stove is equally useless if the boat sinks.

I enjoy a good discussion, and you have raised some interesting points.
One is your use of the singular regarding TV, as if it is a monolith that has plans and agendas. Not my experience, as journalists tend to be a contentious and fractious lot that don't agree on much. Possibly applicable to Murdock as he is powerful, singular and definitely has agendas, although dismantling US manufacturing is not noticeably one of them.
My theory on the loss of manufacturing has more to do with being non innovative, and not being prepared to progress their processes. A couple of examples follow. After WW2 Germany and Japan were in ruins, Britain was bruised, and the US mainland untouched. A decade later Germany and Japan had cars with OHC engines, Britain had side valves and pushrods, while the US had pushrods. When all your tools are broken you have to make new ones, so you may as well design better ones, but the company accountants won't let you replace tooling if it ain't broke. The Mazda 3 has two body types, sedan and hatchback, with each having its own completely unique body panels (not just chopping the boot off the sedan) and they are made in Hiroshima. Another example was when I was involved in buying a new helicopter fleet the Europeans were offering a carbon fibre spaceship, while the US company proudly showed us that they were still using some of their founder's original jigs to build by a cottage industry style approach. The answer is not union based excessive wages and conditions either, as Germany and Japan have excellent wages and conditions.
I agree that the media have been irresponsible, but governmental regulation would be much worse. The general population gets what it wants, and our bread and circuses includes celebrity worship and fast food. When there are more news headlines on scientific achievements than there are on who's sleeping with who in Hollywood, I will regain respect for the media.
If the US was to close its borders to trade, the effects would be catastrophic world wide, but particularly bad in the US. The world economy is too integrated to consider that.
I don't know the answer but feel that the best approach is to hope for a decades long safe landing. First you have to balance the books, and my inclination is to close off the tax loopholes to your rich; however I know that many want to reduce government spending drastically. Your country, your choice.

Hmm, abortion is legal since making it illegal violates a woman's privacy, a State cannot make sure a registered voter is a citizen, you cannot buy a gun with out proving you have a right to possess it, but Homanland Security goons can read your e-Mail without obtaining a warrant. To quote Alice "Curiouser and curiouser."

Poker

pokermind wrote:Hmm, abortion is legal since making it illegal violates a woman's privacy, a State cannot make sure a registered voter is a citizen, you cannot buy a gun with out proving you have a right to possess it, but Homanland Security goons can read your e-Mail without obtaining a warrant. To quote Alice "Curiouser and curiouser."

Poker

Now that we have Obamacare, medical records are computerized and accessible to a host of government agencies. They are already searching records to ID people who they will deem are prohibited from owning guns because they have taken antidepressants.

The government will know when women are pregnant. The government will know if there are any complications with the pregnancy and how many children each pregnant woman has and if they had complications. You can bet that pregnant women will start getting pressured by government to abort babies that the government deems to be high risk and therefore expensive. This will be far more likely if cross checks reveal that the woman is married and a Republican.

namelessfly wrote:

pokermind wrote:Hmm, abortion is legal since making it illegal violates a woman's privacy, a State cannot make sure a registered voter is a citizen, you cannot buy a gun with out proving you have a right to possess it, but Homanland Security goons can read your e-Mail without obtaining a warrant. To quote Alice "Curiouser and curiouser."

Poker

Now that we have Obamacare, medical records are computerized and accessible to a host of government agencies. They are already searching records to ID people who they will deem are prohibited from owning guns because they have taken antidepressants.

The government will know when women are pregnant. The government will know if there are any complications with the pregnancy and how many children each pregnant woman has and if they had complications. You can bet that pregnant women will start getting pressured by government to abort babies that the government deems to be high risk and therefore expensive. This will be far more likely if cross checks reveal that the woman is married and a Republican.

Sounds like Margret Sanger all over again, except this time the target is diffierent. Rather, this time the targets have expanded beyond unwated minorities and the "unfit". THIS time they have many more highly efficient tools to use too. As I recall she was one of the founding progressives.

see...http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger05.html

Really, namelessfly, not everything is about abortion, for Christ sake. How the hell did you and PeterZ get from the malignant influence of media on the economy to abortion and the right to have an unregistered weapon? (preferably a multi-shot one because you can't be bothered to aim properly, you just want to "Rambo" it).
Does media influence and polarizes this debate, too? You bet it does, but this doesn't justify you adopting the most extreme position available. Yes, the right to bear arms is part of your culture and the government shouldn't be allowed to deny you the weapon, if you prove yourself competent in using it and mentally sane.

Yes, abortion is murder, no way around that, but you can't force a woman to bear a child she doesn't love unless you are willing, as community or society, to provide comprehensive support for expectant and young mothers. I'm sorry, but in America the maternity financial and workplace policies vary from barely adequate to pitiful. You truly believe that every life is sacred and shouldn't be terminated? Then put your money, time and effort where your mouth is. I'm not asking you to adopt 10 children (although you should if you are that passionate about), but you can at least support those that you want to do the work of raising them. I always laugh with bitter tears when I see those protesting in front of abortion clinics recoiling from the task of actually adopting and loving a child that is not of their blood.

Going back to the original topic, I mostly disagree that media caused the exodus of manufacturing from US. It was the lack of investment in innovation caused by short term profit oriented quarterly reports (as previous posters said) coupled with the total lack of ethics of the corporate decision makers, for whom a 6 million dollar yacht is not enough. In fairness, it didn't help that most shoppers are not exactly Eistein or Tesla and cannot comprehend that a 70$ pair of shoes of good quality that might last 2 years is better than 3 pairs of 20$ shoes that last 3-4 months.

Manufacturing is actually increasing -albeit slowly- in the US and costs are expect to reach a parity with China, including shipping costs, because wages are rising in China. The US lost manufacturing jobs as productivity and automation increased but the portion of the GDP from manufacturing didn't really go down.

demosthenes wrote:Going back to the original topic, I mostly disagree that media caused the exodus of manufacturing from US. It was the lack of investment in innovation caused by short term profit oriented quarterly reports (as previous posters said) coupled with the total lack of ethics of the corporate decision makers, for whom a 6 million dollar yacht is not enough. In fairness, it didn't help that most shoppers are not exactly Eistein or Tesla and cannot comprehend that a 70$ pair of shoes of good quality that might last 2 years is better than 3 pairs of 20$ shoes that last 3-4 months.

demosthenes wrote:Really, namelessfly, not everything is about abortion, for Christ sake. How the hell did you and PeterZ get from the malignant influence of media on the economy to abortion and the right to have an unregistered weapon? (preferably a multi-shot one because you can't be bothered to aim properly, you just want to "Rambo" it).
Does media influence and polarizes this debate, too? You bet it does, but this doesn't justify you adopting the most extreme position available. Yes, the right to bear arms is part of your culture and the government shouldn't be allowed to deny you the weapon, if you prove yourself competent in using it and mentally sane.

Yes, abortion is murder, no way around that, but you can't force a woman to bear a child she doesn't love unless you are willing, as community or society, to provide comprehensive support for expectant and young mothers. I'm sorry, but in America the maternity financial and workplace policies vary from barely adequate to pitiful. You truly believe that every life is sacred and shouldn't be terminated? Then put your money, time and effort where your mouth is. I'm not asking you to adopt 10 children (although you should if you are that passionate about), but you can at least support those that you want to do the work of raising them. I always laugh with bitter tears when I see those protesting in front of abortion clinics recoiling from the task of actually adopting and loving a child that is not of their blood.

Going back to the original topic, I mostly disagree that media caused the exodus of manufacturing from US. It was the lack of investment in innovation caused by short term profit oriented quarterly reports (as previous posters said) coupled with the total lack of ethics of the corporate decision makers, for whom a 6 million dollar yacht is not enough. In fairness, it didn't help that most shoppers are not exactly Eistein or Tesla and cannot comprehend that a 70$ pair of shoes of good quality that might last 2 years is better than 3 pairs of 20$ shoes that last 3-4 months.

Perhaps it is a stretch, but not too far of a stretch. The media bias has fostered a situation where blacks have aborted a much larger number of their pregnancies than blacks are represented in the population. Does that mean blacks value their lives less than whites or other minorities that do not kill their potential children? Perhaps it does. Does that effect how blacks percieve their chances of succeeding in the economy? Probably it does. Is any of this conclusive? No. It would be damaging force a woman to have a baby, but ignoring the cost of abortion as if the fetus has no value at all is equally damaging.

Trouble is that due to the media polarizing the discussion, we can't discuss this topic. I would argue that media polarization keeps blacks and many minorities from being able to really succeed in the economy in many ways. Abortion is simply the most polarizing.

Been thinking about this topic.

I do not really agree with it being TV Media's fault.

They are a business and in it to make a buck. How do they make a buck by appealing to the people to watch them.

Yes it is a Vicious Circle. But the thing is the American People are behaving like a mob and not thinking. They get what they deserve.

This relates to some stuff that I have been thinking about for a couple of years.

The only thing that faster telecommunications enables is bigger mobs and less personal interaction. IF that is the people's desire.

Case in point last night. Big win for the Democrats in Virginia. Well yes it was, sort of, the Democrats got the governor and LT. Governor. But the House of Delegates the Republicans out polled the Democrats 58% to 42%. Bigger mob that was more distant from the person went to the guy with the money.

Which based on past Federal Government results from like things may be good for the average Virginian. We shall see.

Not sure if this makes any sense.

For what little it is worth,
T2M

The seque into abortion was merely an attempt to offer another example where privacy is compromised by Obamacare, not make abortion the issue.

In the US you are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty. The burden is not on the gun owner to prove that they are sane. The burden is on the government to prove that they are not sane. Interestingly, studies have shown that in the absence of criminal offenses that would disqualify someone from owning a gun, people who are deemed to be mentally I'll are no more likely to commit violent crime than "normal" people. My one caveat on this is people who take certain antidepressants that are strongly correlated with mass murder incidents. The focus should be on the drugs, not the guns.

The point here is that Obamacare enables the government to intrude into people's private lives. How much you bet that government agencies will access health records in making employment decisions. With a growing percentage of jobs being government jobs, this puts people with health issues at a huge disadvantage.

Getting back to the abortion issue. If you really think the issue is privacy, should government officials have access to women's medical history and the authority to impose their preferred choice? Read Love Conquers All by Fred Saberhagen.

The US experience with abortion is that easy access to abortion is correlated with high, unintended pregnancy rates. Experience shows that the best way to reduce teen pregnancy is to close Planned Parenthood clinics. This seems counter intuitive but many of the predominantly Catholic countries which have zero to very few abortions also have low birth rates. Contraceptives do work but the effectiveness is affected by individual motivation and responsibility. This might explain why all contraceptives work best for married couples.

demosthenes wrote:Really, namelessfly, not everything is about abortion, for Christ sake. How the hell did you and PeterZ get from the malignant influence of media on the economy to abortion and the right to have an unregistered weapon? (preferably a multi-shot one because you can't be bothered to aim properly, you just want to "Rambo" it).
Does media influence and polarizes this debate, too? You bet it does, but this doesn't justify you adopting the most extreme position available. Yes, the right to bear arms is part of your culture and the government shouldn't be allowed to deny you the weapon, if you prove yourself competent in using it and mentally sane.

Yes, abortion is murder, no way around that, but you can't force a woman to bear a child she doesn't love unless you are willing, as community or society, to provide comprehensive support for expectant and young mothers. I'm sorry, but in America the maternity financial and workplace policies vary from barely adequate to pitiful. You truly believe that every life is sacred and shouldn't be terminated? Then put your money, time and effort where your mouth is. I'm not asking you to adopt 10 children (although you should if you are that passionate about), but you can at least support those that you want to do the work of raising them. I always laugh with bitter tears when I see those protesting in front of abortion clinics recoiling from the task of actually adopting and loving a child that is not of their blood.

Going back to the original topic, I mostly disagree that media caused the exodus of manufacturing from US. It was the lack of investment in innovation caused by short term profit oriented quarterly reports (as previous posters said) coupled with the total lack of ethics of the corporate decision makers, for whom a 6 million dollar yacht is not enough. In fairness, it didn't help that most shoppers are not exactly Eistein or Tesla and cannot comprehend that a 70$ pair of shoes of good quality that might last 2 years is better than 3 pairs of 20$ shoes that last 3-4 months.