Depends on the age category, folks 60 and over can read and spell good. By the time you get down to 40 it's about 85% and the younger the folks the more illiterate they are. 3/4 of the young kids wouldn't know the difference between mute and moot.
Detroit Files for Bankruptcy
- Thread starter karrie
- Start date
Depends on the age category, folks 60 and over can read and spell good. By the time you get down to 40 it's about 85% and the younger the folks the more illiterate they are. 3/4 of the young kids wouldn't know the difference between mute and moot.
Statism is turning America into Detroit – Ayn Rand's Starnesville come to life
Look at this description of Detroit from today’s Observer:
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Statism is turning America into Detroit – Ayn Rand's Starnesville come to life – Telegraph Blogs
Look at this description of Detroit from today’s Observer:
What isn’t dumped is stolen. Factories and homes have largely been stripped of anything of value, so thieves now target cars’ catalytic converters. Illiteracy runs at around 47%; half the adults in some areas are unemployed. In many neighbourhoods, the only sign of activity is a slow trudge to the liquor store.
Now have a look at the uncannily prophetic description of Starnesville, a Mid-Western town in Ayn Rand’s dystopian novel, Atlas Shrugged. Starnesville had been home to the great Twentieth Century Motor Company, but declined as a result of socialism:
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Statism is turning America into Detroit – Ayn Rand's Starnesville come to life – Telegraph Blogs
Responding to criticisms of the political bias of Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau said "People who get their politics from cartoons deserve what they get." I'd say the same of people who get their politico-economics from novels.
Hmm... well... Detroit's demise has been due to *Capitalist* powers moving jobs elsewhere or overseas, so in terms of *effect*, what would Ayn Rand say is the difference between Statism and Unfettered-Capitalism?
I think it's funny how a lot of Evangelical Tea-Partyers waving the Ayn Rand flag don't know she was a hardcore athiest.
Yeah, but actually, if you've had any contact with the American labour market, you'll know that in fact, American workers, in terms of productivity and quality, have been maintaining world standards... the problem is management, and in a funny way, it's not even management's fault that they do the things they do that are bad for workers and the nation.
It boils down to the holy declaration from the all-seeing eye that profits must be maximized for shareholders, such that nothing else matters, and it gets the MBAs hired to manage the show into a bind... they can know they are polluting the rivers, but if there's any way possible for them to get around the environmental regulations, then they *must* do so, else they loose their jobs and can't pay off their student loans, much less raise kids.
It means they are *required* to do whatever they can to push down wages and raise prices. That leaves workers in a position of having to pay more with less income, which is no incentive at all for workers to be a Johny-on-the spot kind'a guys who always produce flawless products efficiently...
... And efficiency is what makes a product good and cheep.. that's the German way: Effizienz. Keep in mind that Germany maintains a positive balance of trade with a first-class standard of living, is number two only after China for total value of exports, and is holding up the EU economy. German bosses are hardcore (I know because I had one), but if you get the job done, they *do* reward you, which North American MBAs are mandated *not* to do.
The Tea party line is to slag workers for wanting to be payed enough to raise a family, and the lefties retort with slams against the shareholder class, while stuck inbetween is managment, and, as W. Edwards Deming (after who's name Japan's greatest award for business excellence is named) used to say, success or failure in business *always* boils down to management, yet our management class is stuck in a dilema forcing them to push workers into a bind.
In my experience, it's only been about one-in-thirty MBAs who are seriously psychotic about wanting to become gazillionaire king-of-the-worlders. All the others just want to make a decent living, and business seemed to be the way to go, so here's a thought...
What if Management is allowed to take a direction not necessarily the most profitable, if they can show moral justification?
What if they could say, "Yes, we could make 20% profits by polluting that river, but we can still make 10% profits by *not* polluting the river, and then I can let my kids swim in it."?
I betcha if MBAs/Management were give some elbow-room like that, then things would clean up and get more efficient real fast.
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I really don't get your point, Petros. Maybe you're ascribing someone else' post to me. I have consisently villified Free Trade, monetarism (free markets in currency and credit) Nafta, FTA, WTO, IMF in all of my posts for years. They are ALL part of the economic paradigm that is destroying the world. I've never posted anything in support of ANY of them.
Just curious. How do you reconcile that with your beliefs? If we're created from the same dust, why raise barriers between us?
Should there be tariffs between provinces and territories too? What about between counties, cities, etc?
1. The disease is Global Free Markets.. and one symptom is Detroit.
2. so you have a better explanation. My sources are some the most sophisticated and brilliant theologians.. and scientists.. of the last 2 millennia.. all of whom see the logical necessity of a manifest evil in any explanation of a rational universe.
3. To the extent that both are beguiled by power, greed, sloth, lust of insatiable apetites and general dissolution there is a great deal of similarity between the prevailing culture of Wall Street and what you'd find in a 'gay' village.
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Would you mind elaborating? I don't get it. Your response draws a blank in my mind.
While I agree that the economy needs to be governed by spiritual principles, how is it exactly that free trade gets into this? Hos is it more ethical to buy from my group (whether racial, national, ethnic, etc.) than from another? Does it matter who grows my food? Again, how do we explain protectionism from a religious standpoint seeing that it is about raising barriers between the children of God who are supposed to love one another?
Free Markets are an affront to any rational administration of an economy for the common good. They are inherently predatory, a devolution to the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest. They are self destroying and therefor logically absurd.
The basis for any economy should be the nation state.. not the Globe and not the territory.. although certain constructive incentives can be used to develop geographical regions. It is at the national level that a full economic plan employing credit, monetary policy, infrastructure, and tariffs can be fully coordinated.
As Global Free Markets have been applied we have seen a relentless polarization of weath.. an evaporation of real productive wealth in industry.. and encroaching poverty.. as the middle class is wiped out.
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Define "nation." Do you mean the currently-recognised nation-states as they exist on this date? What about Sudan and South Sudan? Were they all evil before and now they're hunky-dory, or was everything cool until they split? Is France a nation, or should it go back to being Ile de France, Burgundy, Normandy, and Piedmont?
Is Texas properly part of the nation of the U.S., or the nation of Mexico?
The answer to this and your previous post are complex. I would refer you the Social Encyclicals of Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum), Pius XI (Quadragesimo Anno) and John Paul II (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis).. all comprehensively referenced to Scripture.
They are all available at Papal Encyclicals On Line. Not that i expect you to access them.. as i have the distinct impression that you are a troll with little interest in anything except casting sophistry laden barbs of little depth or substance.
The proper definition is the Nation State.. as they exist as a formal Constitutional entity.. including its current borders, government, currency and judicial system. It includes a free flow of goods, credit and populations within those borders. France should be a nation, but it has had its sovereignty destroyed by the EU and Euro. Texas is a State... America is a Nation State.
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