Are we a nation of whiners?
 

Phil Gramm, economic advisor to Senator McCain thinks so.

So, do you think we're in a recession? Can we make this "imaginary" recession go away if we all think happy thoughts? If I say to myself 1,000 times, "Gas is only $2.00 per gallon," will I be pleasantly surprised upon my next visit to the pumps?

Gawd!!! Why are you bringing this up again? I've heard it aaaallll day long, please, give me a break. I mean, come on. Seriously. Things are rough out here. I have to make my own blended coffee, and I had GENERIC chocolate puffs for breakfast for pete's sake.

I had to scarf that down to make my carpool on time too!


hehehe...
growth.. unlimited, unidirectional growth. no tolerance for cyclic variations, changes in vector.. Yeah. I do hear a lot of whining.

I love it when people who are rich enough not to feel the pinch yet, complain about the little people who do.

Which nation, sorry?
The inter in internet stands for international.

We are a nation of whiners. We always have been. We talk and complain about the things around us that we deem unpleasant or negative in any way. That's cool. What isn't cool is that we have now become a nation of whiners who go that extra step and whine "why hasn't our government fixed this for us yet???" No longer do we exercise our perogative to bitch, moan, and kvetch. We expect the government to jump up and eliminate the source of our displeasure.

You don't like the housing crisis caused in large part by your own greed? Well, Mr voting citizen, let me draft a bill that will allow you to keep your home you couldn't afford in the first place, even if you can't make payments now.

What's that, Mr Citizen? Gas prices are causing you difficulty in filling up your Excursion? And your Neighbor's Yukon? I say, that is a problem, make sure you turn to CSpan tomorrow and I'll discuss it in soundbyte format.

Oh, Mr Citizen, you must be joking! You're saying that the downward slope of the economic cycle is causing you pain and suffering as you watch your 401K balance shrink? Oh Lord, I'll talk to Mr Bernanke about the money supply.

Yes, Mr Citizen? What's this? Coffins you say? Servicemen and women? Oh, I see the sight of flagdraped coffins coming back to the US causes you to lose sleep. I think the only prudent course is to bring all of them home tomorrow without regard to the effect in the region. Certainly, you broke it you buy it doesn't apply here.

Seriously people. Life in these United States looks daunting and troubled at this point in time. There are things about it that are stressful. The future is foggy, but the past is only crystal clear with rose colored glasses because you have forgotten the things that stressed you out at that point in time. Whine and bitch all you want, but quit asking uncle sam to fix everything. The more we allow the government to touch and play with, the more they'll mess up.

Does he understand that the export boom is the result of a weak dollar? And that a weak dollar means we can't afford to buy all the foreign crap? And that we don't make any of our own crap anymore, so we have to buy the foreign crap. But we can't afford it.

It's kind of funny. As I am typing this, a tour of about 30 Japanese people just walked by my office door, looking around. No idea who they are or why they are here. Never saw that before in the 17 years I've worked here. One or two, sure, but not 30. Maybe they are going to buy my company. I smiled and waved.

wrt the weak dollar:

If you're losing a buck a sale, you can't make it up in volume. It's not all about the boom in sales...

Some people are laying the blame on a generation deliberately encouraged to be narcissistic by inflation of their self-esteem, whether solidly founded or no. Fox News just ran a segment on that today -- featuring a minutes-long cut of an office surveillance cam showing a youthful office guy shoving and punching other cubicle-people, chucking papers around, hurling one computer monitor after another around the place and kicking cubicle partitions over until he falls on his ass on a desk. No one tackles him...

OK. Can someone explain to me why we are supposed to be having an export boom when the latest figures from Bloomberg show a trade deficit of over 59 billion dollars as of last May? I am seriously confused.

The value of the dollar affects a lot of more than you think about.

or shoots him.

Why in fact he is right on target. It must be someone elses fault.

When I was "let go" right before Christmas because of the sub prime market crash, and I watched other people get fired as well, I don't think I was whining. We all were upset.For good reason. And I was hanging in there....

I might add, that I did not simply imagine the whole event.

I also might add that I am working on a creative project with the city and state to offset the recession locally, and to develop more interest in spending money right here. This is not openly stated because we don't want to look desparate as desperation is not an attractoin, but this exists and they have the numbers to reflect that, on the state and local level. These are things I don't imagine, as you know, I have an active imagination, but this is not something I want to conjure up because it's no fuc**** fun.

Recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We haven't had that. Television journalists apparently aren't aware of the definition, hence the term mental recession. Unfortunately, enough people believing these bozos can create recession by generating chain reaction fear about investing. I for one don't want the government to "fix" anything. They are the cause of most of our problems.

With the Paris Hilton tax cut, Bush did more than enough already.

July is the next time that a wave of sub-prime rates increase sharply. Therefore another wave of loan defaults is expected. Numbers suggest that 30% of Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae loans are in default. Numbers like $30billion defaults have been suggested.

When government 'fixes' an economy with free money and corporate welfare, then economic forces take revenge four and more years later. Welcome to an economy manipulated with massive government deficits, tax cuts to the wealthy, corporate welfare, and Enron style accounting. Coming soon is the part where economic forces take revenge.

Nothing new. This was predicted in Jul 2006 with the usual responses. Which is your favorite paranoid fantasy? Today's problems were seen when? July 2006.

Read those posts. Notice what was absurd then is reality now. These economic problems were apparent years ago when others were instead hyping the George Jr economy and his myths. For example, you were warned what tax cuts without spending cuts do. Now we begin to pay for an economic boom based in money games rather than from product innovations.

So what do politicians do? Hype another myth about whiners. We got some major financial problems because Cheney said, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." Guess what.

And what exactly does that mean to you?

I love my big brother, I really do. We can't discuss politics, we just don't agree. He got mad at me once for mentioning that he and his wife make really (really really) good money.

This weekend, he went on a rant about how he's so sick and tired of people whining about gas prices. He went on to say that buying a higher mileage car is stupid because you can't possibly make up for other things over the course of the life of your car by saving a bit on gas.

Somewhere along the way, he forgot that there are people out there working for minimum wage, to whom 20 bucks is a couple meals for their family, who couldn't make the mistake of trying to buy a more economical car; just keeping the one they have running is killing them but they still can't afford a new one.

I suppose we are to just shut up and smile. But, this is a country in which we can whine all we want. So, I say...let the whiners whine! Whine away! Whine whine whine whine whine. ;)

No one has mentioned the fact that higher gas prices mean higher prices for all sorts of things, including food. Sure it may be only a few pennies per item, but it all adds up. Not only do low income people get hit at the gas pump, they get hit at the grocery store, too. The repercussions of the mounting cost of gas are being felt all through the economy, and, as usual, the poor are feeling the brunt of it. That's not their imagination but economic fact.

Sam I believe you are on target but IMHO that trickle down effect has not shown itself on the cost of goods yet. But it's coming.

Hey, at least used SUVs are cheap, right?

I recently heard on the radio that the cost of food has increased by 50% in the past 10 months in Egypt, where x% (I forget, but it was an astonishingly high number) of people live on <=$2/day. The saddest part is the malnutrition that results from people's reactions of contracting their circle of foods they can buy. No more vegetables. Meat? HA! Staples only, starch and sugar. Sad.

A rise in property taxes in this state.

Ooops, caught being not American there, SG. yourbad.


And yes, yes you are. Aussies call Brits "Whinging Poms". That's just because they aint got a real grip on you lot yet.

Sorry, what was the question?

:D

That would have settled his hash. Of course, there's the question of overreaction to be settled like the hash...

Robert Heinlein asked, by implication, in several places in his fictional oeuvre, "How much of a spanking do you have to give an adult? And if he needs a spank, is he an adult?"

Depends on how much he enjoys being paddled...:rolleyes:

They are cutting all kinds of state programs here left and right to make up a 1.2 billion shortfall. The most obvious places we are seeing it is in the state parks and wildlife programs. Some social programs are being cut as well.

Kidding aside, I'm sure he meant spanking, comma, punitive, rather than comma, tie someone up and force him to have fun. :lol:

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