The root cause of the country's economic problems:

[Deja Q]

Poll question: The root cause of the country's economic problems:

I waffle; you surmise. :)

[jlake]

1. Education, and not adapting to a changing global economy.

[RC]

2. How can we have a good economy if people do not have living wage jobs?

What bu$h is doing again/still has been proven to be just the opposite of what is needed to keep our country economically viable. Impeach him. Stop him from pardoning his criminal cronies.

[undeterred]

3. Military spending.

[Arugula Latte]

24. ...

[Binka]

4. Capitalism Is A Mafia Shell Game

Deregulation is another name for legalized theft. Very simple.

[Initech]

5. Something to do with CEOs of publically traded companies

treating their workers like shit (like robbing pension plans for instance) to make several million?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Republican policies

starting with the illegal and immoral war in Iraq, followed by tax cuts for the rich, and rewards to corrupt corporations.

[Ishoutandscream2]

23. Bingo!

Perfect response.

[rateyes]

7. Reverse Robin Hoods

Stealing from the poor to give to the rich. In another word: Greed.

[LiberalEsto]

8. Not enough taxes on the rich

and the corporations is, in my opinion, the main cause.

Thom Hartmann said the other day that in the 1950s, taxes on corporations and the very rich were something like 60 to 90% and yet we had the largest, most economically sound middle class ever. The CEOs still got a lot of money, but they only made maybe 30 times what the company's lowest-paid worker earned. Today they grab something like 400 times or more what the lowest-earning workers get, and pay proportionately very little in taxes on it.

Another factor is privatization of federal government functions. For example, my DH recently left Fannie Mae (a quasi-federal institution) as part of a company-wide buyout to reduce the number of full-time personnel over age 50. They ended up replacing him with TWO $300-an-hour consultants. He never made even a fraction of what these guys are costing Fannie Mae. All this privatization ends up costing the federal treasury far more than it cost to do the work in-house. And then figure in all the huge wasteful, expensive no-bid contracts with Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. We live near Washington, DC, and believe me, almost everything is being done by expensive private contractors and consultants these days.

And let's not forget the incredible squandering of precious lives and tax dollars in Iraq.

The pigheaded refusal of the American auto industry to build and sell RELIABLE, gas-efficient cars. After going through 5 transmissions on our horrible 1992 Dodge Caravan, I will never waste money on an American car again. If our automakers weren't such greedy shortsighted bastards, we would be buying American cars, not Toyotas and Hondas.

Offshoring jobs and importing foreign workers on H1B visas or other legal scams is also a huge factor in destroying America's middle class.

[Two Americas]

9. one opinion

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital—all undreamed of by the fathers—the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small business men and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor—these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age—other people's money—these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
June 27th, 1936

[OhioChick]

10. Outsourcing, Not to Mention NAFTA, CAFTA, etc. n/t

[pansypoo53219]

11. the return of trickle down and credit spending

the little people have a drought and the sky is red.

[Perry Logan]

12. Class warfare.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Unfettered Republicanism ..... THAT is the problem

[burythehatchet]

14. Imbalance of power and skewed distribution of wealth

[Bucky]

15. Country music

Randy Travis alone is probably causing the trade deficit.

[Deja Q]

16. And I thought it had to do with Ledger and Spears.

They seem just as irrelevant to the OP as "country music" (which, BTW, does more to encourage bestiality and/or suicide with its maudlin lyrics...)

[TalkingDog]

17. Winter follows Autumn, which follows Summer.

Economic:

http://www.kwaves.com/kond_overview.htm


"Professor Nickolai Kondratieff ( pronounced "Kon-DRA-tee-eff") Shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he helped develop the first Soviet Five-Year Plan , for which he analyzed factors that would stimulate Soviet economic growth. In 1926, Kondratieff published his findings in a report entitled, "Long Waves in Economic Life". Based upon Kondratieff's conclusions, his report was viewed as a criticism of Joseph Stalin's stated intentions for the total collectivization of agriculture. Soon after, he was dismissed from his post as director of the Institute for the Study of Business Activity in 1928. He was arrested in 1930 and sentenced to the Russian Gulag (prison); his sentence was reviewed in 1938, and he received the death penalty, which it is speculated was carried out that same year. Kondratieff's major premise was that capitalist economies displayed long wave cycles of boom and bust ranging between 50-60 years in duration. Kondratieff's study covered the period 1789 to 1926 and was centered on prices and interest rates. Kondratieff's theories documented in the 1920's were validated with the depression less than 10 years later."




and

Social:

http://www.fourthturning.com/


"Just after the millennium, America will enter a new era that will culminate with a crisis comparable to the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. The survival of the nation will almost certainly be at stake.

Strauss and Howe base this vision on a provocative theory of American history as a series of recurring 80- to 100-year cycles. Each cycle has four "turnings"-a High, an Awakening, an Unraveling, and a Crisis. The authors locate today's America as midway through an Unraveling, roughly a decade away from the next Crisis (or Fourth Turning). And they recommend ways Americans can prepare for what's ahead, as a nation and as individuals."


Does that make our leaders less culpable? No. There is still free will. But there are organic forces that trend personalities toward opportunites.




My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

[Auggie]

18. Just about all of the above

[Zynx]

19. Far too much Wall Street credit engineering.

The securitization of debt was a good thing until it went too far.

More fundamentally, we need more investment in infrastructure and education. The world is getting more competitive and we have to maintain our edge.

[Kansas Wyatt]

20. Republican & Republican Lite Policies

When was the last time there has been a hard shove back to the Left to correct this country and it's escalating two class system?

[trotsky]

21. More than one, and more than you've listed.

Outsourcing is a big one. INCOME DISPARITY is bigger, though. Look at this "stimulus" package the Bushies are proposing. It goes TOTALLY against all "supply side" theories. It's demand side economics. That's what drove our economy for most of the 20th century. You give real buying power to the majority of the people, and you have incredible economic expansion.

Reagan tax cuts, offshoring, capital gains tax breaks, etc. all combine to create the conditions under which the spending engine of the economy is getting choked off. The rich don't spend their tax cuts, they invest, and it's usually overseas. The money is out of our economy.

It is truly difficult to believe Republicans actually buy into supply side. You have to think when they get in a room alone they just sit and laugh at the fast one they've pulled on every working person.

[The Gunslinger]

22. Most wages are going down, cost of living going up

That will mess an economy up. Until that changes, the economy will suck no matter how much the wealthy corporate elite play with their stock market.

[joe_sixpack]

25. Everyone's too leveraged

housing debt, credit card debt etc. It means that when things turn down a bit, they're not in a good position to weather the storm. We also have come to expect strong growth in the economy as a given, quarter after quarter. Nothing in nature grows constantly.

[baldguy]

26. Corporatism.