We cannot keep preaching to the world about democracy and capitalism while our own house is so wildly out of order.

Zakaria's premise that we, as a nation, must begin to save more and consume less. We as a nation are in a world of hurt we are hemmorging money for everything from the war on terrorism to the bail out of the stock market to the expending of money for out daily needs. We need to start saving and stop consuming as much from other countries. The money we have that we call our own is loosing value in the world market, but if we start saving our funds we will eventually get out of this financial slump. "As economist Jeffrey Sachs points out, "We've wanted lots of government, but we haven't wanted to pay for it." So we've borrowed our way out of the problem. In 1990, the national debt stood at $3 trillion. (That sounds high, but keep reading.) By 2000, it had almost doubled, to $5.75 trillion. It is currently $10.2 trillion. The number moved into 11 digits last month, which meant that the National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of space to display the figures. Its owners plan to get a new clock next year." so in other words we are throwing salt on an open wound that's hemmorging money. "In the medium and long term, we have to get back to basics. Households, for instance, should save more. Governments should put incentives in place that make such savings more likely. The U.S. government offers enormous incentives to consume (the deduction of mortgage interest being the best example), and it works. We have the biggest houses in the world, the thinnest flat-screen TVs and the most cars. If we were to tax consumption and encourage savings, that would also work. Regulations on credit-card debt should be revised to ensure that people understand the risks and costs of these instruments. Moving in this direction would be good for families and for the government as well." so we could start evolving from the spend happy Americans to the Americans with money to spend...so to speak. "Curry points out that "30 percent of S&P 500 profits last year were earned by financial firms, and U.S. consumers were spending $800 billion more than they earned every year. As a result, most of our top math Ph.D.s were being pulled into nonproductive financial engineering instead of bio-tech research and fuel technology. " so the people that could get the U.S. out of dept are in nonproductive fields instead of doing things that can get us out of dept such as fuel research.
"It's a fundamental American belief that competition is good—in business, athletics and life. Checks and balances are James Madison's crucial mechanisms, exposing and countering abuse and arrogance and forcing discipline on people. This discipline will be painful for a country that has gotten used to having it all. But it will make us much stronger in the long run. If we can learn the right lessons from this crisis, the United States will once more be playing by its own rules. And that cannot be bad for us."

samuelson:is this a repeat of 1929?

"There are parallels between then and now, but there are also big differences. Now, as then, Americans borrowed heavily before the crisis—in the 1920s, for cars, radios and appliances; in the past decade, for homes or against inflated home values. Now, as then, the crisis caught people by surprise and is global in scope. But unlike then, the federal government is now a huge part of the economy (20 percent vs. 3 percent in 1929) and its spending—for Social Security, defense, roads—provides greater stabilization. Unlike then, government officials have moved quickly, if clumsily, to contain the crisis." says Robert J. Samuelson. The story is saying that we were on the road to another depression of the 1929s. but the fact that the government is now a major part in the economy and its spending for the economy to improve such as things in Social Security, defense, roads and other things that will help the growth of stabilization. "We need to remind ourselves that economic slumps—though wrenching and disillusioning for millions—rarely become national tragedies. Since the late 1940s, the United States has suffered 10 recessions. On average, they've lasted 10 months and involved peak monthly unemployment of 7.6 percent; the worst (those of 1973–75 and 1981–82) both lasted 16 months and had peak unemployment of 9.0 percent and 10.8 percent, respectively. We are almost certainly in a recession now, but joblessness, 6.1 percent in September, would have to rise spectacularly to match post-World War II highs. The stock market tells a similar story. There have been 10 previous bear markets, defined as declines of at least 20 percent in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. The average decline was 31.5 percent; those of 1973–74 and 2000–02 were nearly 50 percent. By contrast, the S&P's low point so far (Friday, Oct. 3) was 30 percent below the peak reached in October 2007." The Great Depression resulted from the mix of a weak economy and government policies that grew the weakness and that were only partially held off by the New Deal. If we can avoid a similar blunder, the great drama of these recent weeks may prove blessedly misleading.

The year after high school

I want to go to Shasta college after high school because it has some of the classes I want to take. such as I want to work outside like for the fish and game or in waterworks like my uncle, he drives around and checks the water level and whats in it and stuff. One of my dads friends is an master water technician and he earns a lot of money and he enjoys his work, he works outside hes not stuck to a computer in an air conditioned office. Another reason I want to go to Shasta college is because I don't have a definite idea on what i want to be so like you said I wont have to fork over my life savings to change majors. Another thing I like is welding so I may go in to that field and Shasta has the opportunity to do so. I'm close to home and to family and friends too. Though I may transfer over to Humboldt for like the fish and game thing, but over there I'll also be close to family my dad's side of the family is over there and also in Virgina but I'm not going go to Virgina....way to far away. I worked at Whiskeytown over the summer and I would love to get hired back, the reason I don't work there any more is it was a program and it was a seasonal job. So that would help me pay for the college tuition. As far as I know am the only one that Wayne (my boss) said that he would hire me back if he could. So I'll try to get a regular job there. "If you love your job then it isn't a job." and I loved my job. so that fact that I make a career out of something I love then I'll stick with it for the rest of my life.

To spend is to tax, wall streets $700 billion bail out

To spend is to tax, as capitalist deity Milton Friedman is said to have put it.
To see how good the government thinks the credit risks are, the Federal Reserve is charging AIG (until last week a Dow component) an interest rate of three-month LIBOR plus 8.5 percent—about 11.4 percent. That's a lower rate than many credit-card customers pay, but a higher rate than most junk-rated companies pay. But it's almost certain that all these bailouts will cost taxpayers tens of billions, possibly hundreds of billions, of dollars. so how do the federals think we are going to pay this major bail out for some failing companies. "I'd love to hear what former Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld, or President Bush (who continues to cower behind Paulson's large frame) or Goldman SachsCEO Lloyd Blankfein and Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, whose butts were just saved, has to propose." says Daniel Gross of Newsweek. Possibility would be to make the bailed out companies self-insure against their own incompetence, the way banks have done in the past with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and of course Congress should abolish the exemption that lets private equity and hedge-fund managers to pay low capital-gains tax rates for the money they earn managing other people's money. The fact that they had to be helped because of their own incompetence is their fault. So i think that we should help get them back on their feet but not give them all the money they need, because who is going to pay for this...we will. The last i checked the United States was nine trillion dollars in dept to the chinese.

fighting binge drinking

The current drinking age in the U.S. is 21 but in Germany is 18 and they are having problems with binge drinking. Some colleges in the U.S. are trying to crack down on drinking, some are having the janitors stop cleaning up the mess the students make and have the students clean up after them selves. and hopefully the students will find out that a kid with projectile vomit is not a nice thing to see. it has been proven that the "forbidden fruit" tastes better to a 19 year old but 15 year old are drinking more and more. but in colleges the drinking is not just limited to the elite colleges most state colleges have a problem. in Germany the drinking age thing is being hassled by mothers against drunk driving, they are trying to get the age back up to 21. John McCardle, the former president of Middlebury College, stated "Choose Responsibility" movement a couple of years ago, argues that other factors in the high way deaths that the mothers against drunk driving are trying to solve that some are from the reckless driving and from the not using of seat belts. in the past it seemed like it was pride to be able to hold your liquor but now it seems like they try and expel it. women with lower tolerances are even quicker to get sick. i think that if they do lower the drinking age to 18 more students will result in drinking. and things could go bad very quickly. i think more teen pregnancies will happen along with rise in STDs.

The price of our addiction

In this article that was written in '06, it states that we need to find an alternate energy, are we close to having a solid alternative energy source, what should we do about it, have you and your family changed about about driving habits what, about heating, and what i see as an alternative fuel source.
we are paying three to four dollars for a gallon of fuel for our vehicles, which is a long cry from the 25cents that my grandad complained about when he was a kid. i think that we are somewhat close to having a alternative energy source but not close to mass production, such as fuel cells in cars the fuel cell of today are large and bulky to place effectively in a car. we should try and conserve oil for other things...and focus on finding and using a new fuel like hydrogen, fuel cells, ethanol. i have driven less and driven to less places since my truck could no longer be filled for 20 bucks. my parents drive trucks that run on diesel so the price is really hurting them. and it the middle of summer who uses heat?? but i geuss in the winter we use it but we use a wood fireplace. i think that we should use ethonol as a fuel source.

The most expensive sience experiment

The £5bn machine is for one thing, to find out if there is such a thing as dark matter. Some say when they start it up and collide the protons that they will create a new black hole and it will destroy the earth and all that is on it. The engineers have not yet said when they will initiate the "big bang" that they have spent 13 years building up to. The LHC is the most complicated and ambitious experiment ever built, they have been plagued by equipment failure, cost over runs, and construction failure. The start up date is two years late. The LHC should answer one very simple question: What is mass? i learned in sience class that mass is how things take up space. I think that it is kind of worth it, enough to find out more information about space and its "ways". but not enough to build something that can destroy us. well we did build the atom bomb and that could of destroyed us, but that was between countries this atom smasher is known world wide. i think it would have been better if they could have tested in on a smaller scale, or build a machine that has more than one purpose like this one does. to find out what atoms are made of and if there is really dark matter. during the winter the LHC will be shut down and fine tuned for the collisions at full energy. Eventually, two proton beams will be shot in opposite directions around the LHC at close to the speed of light, completing about 11,000 laps each second. At selected points the beams will cross paths, smashing together near four massive "detectors" that monitor the collisions for interesting events. Scientists are hoping that new sub-atomic particles will emerge, revealing fundamental insights into the nature of the cosmos.