USA crisis.

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.
Obama's problem was that he was voted in by a certain "demographic" to make reforms and to help poorer communities in the USA. His efforts to reform health care for example have been blocked at almost every stage by the Republican majority in congress. This is despite the fact that leaving aside the humanitarian aspects, the economic disadvantage of a nation spending a disproportionate slice of its GDP on the health care sector is bad economics for the nation as a whole. :doh: And that's why the republican far right are usually wrong. Their world view blinkers them to the bigger picture. They blame government taxation/interference for the economic straits they find themselves in but fail to see that as a nation they consume too much and earn too little. :crazy: Any policy which seems to to try to address that imbalance they immediately condemn as an attack on the American way of life. :wallbash: They would sincerely tell you they have a God given right to exploit the world's resources and anyone challenging that should be opposed militarily. This is entirely consistent with their "right to bear arms" opposition to gun control... :(
As a rule of thumb most of the values advocated by the Tea Party are bad news for the rest of the world imho. :dk:
 
Strange indeed. This is not the only article I have read referring back to the Founding Fathers...it is a bit of a theme with American commentators.


I personally believe that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest Brits that ever lived. Yet we must not forget that he was also a shrewd politician, changing sides in his early years and failing to gain the voters' confidence in his later years. That does not take away from his greatness.
 
So on a note of self interest, should I buy my holiday dollars now or in October when I go? :confused:
 
It's easy for us to see it from our point of view, but let's not forget that America is/was built on greed and looking after number 1.

Bit of prejudiced statement.

It's not as if Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, China, Brazil, Russia, and any other nation are somehow built on altruism?

The UK has trodden in many places and on many people to get to its current state.
 
I personally believe that Winston Churchill was one of the greatest Brits that ever lived. Yet we must not forget that he was also a shrewd politician, changing sides in his early years and failing to gain the voters' confidence in his later years. That does not take away from his greatness.

We also tend to forget his mother came from New York.
 
It's easy for us to see it from our point of view, but let's not forget that America is/was built on greed and looking after number 1.

A very greedy American pharmaceutical company developed some new drugs and sold it to needy people for a lot of money, in pursuit of evermore profit for its greedy shareholders. As it happens, these new drugs made by this very greedy company saved my life. So on a personal level I'm fine with greed.
 
A very greedy American pharmaceutical company developed some new drugs and sold it to needy people for a lot of money, in pursuit of evermore profit for its greedy shareholders. As it happens, these new drugs made by this very greedy company saved my life. So on a personal level I'm fine with greed.

Fair point, but if they weren't so greedy they could save more lives, no?
 
Fair point, but if they weren't so greedy they could save more lives, no?

Well it seems that financial reward is one of the best incentives.... the Soviet union didn't quite manage to produce much of anything (apart from some very good weapons of war).

How could we get pharmaceutical companies to invest millions in R&D without promising them handsome rewards? If there's a better way, I'll go for it.

As Winston Churchill said, 'It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried', this also applies to greed as means to motivate people. Promises of rewards in the afterlife just don't seem to work that well any more...
 
I'm not having a pop at people trying to make money, far from it, and I'm not some spon-eyed commie either.

I'm giving my opinion on what America was built on- greed.

And like I said earlier in this thread (the bit that Dryce conveniently edited out) the vitriol poured on anyone showing any sort of social conscience in the U.S. is, to me, quite astonishing.
 
Thank you.

What do you think of the situation?

The world and the US itself has known about the US federal deficit problem for at least two decades. But somehow everybody has had the delusion - even in the current economic crisis that it is either sustainable or that it will magically disappear.

So nothing new. All that's happened is an arbitrary point has been reached where the US gov has to do something - and this time it's not being swept under the carpet.

At least it's in the open (consider how the Chinese government decision making process works).

I think the aspect which is disturbing people and the media is the nature of the politics and the background interests and arguments. It's not helped by the apparent weakness of the current president and the lack of strong mainstream leadership in the two parties.

My view is that this is less important than the US as a country and the world coming to terms with the US deficit and the fact that it's well past the point where measures should have been taken to deal with it.

If they go into the technical default next week then that will rattle people all over but might not be a bad thing in the long term.

It's the taxation and spending measures that are decided on and implemented over the next few years that are the most important aspect.

UK has faced up to its own deficit - but this was via the election and change of government. People still haven't faced up to the scale of measures required over the longer term to contain it.
 
I'm not having a pop at people trying to make money, far from it, and I'm not some spon-eyed commie either.

I'm giving my opinion on what America was built on- greed.

It's a matter of perspective.

You say 'greed' but a proponent of the US would use the terms freedom, hard work, opportunity. They wouldn't necessarily deny that greed was part of the equation - simply that it wasn't all of the equation.
 
It's a matter of perspective.

You say 'greed' but a proponent of the US would use the terms freedom, hard work, opportunity. They wouldn't necessarily deny that greed was part of the equation - simply that it wasn't all of the equation.

To me at least, there is a difference between aspiration and greed.

I aspire to make money so my family can be comfortable financially, I don't want to make lots of money by trampling over everyone and ruining other people's lives. Which is the American way.
 
The enigma that is the United States of America is perhaps best typified by the irony of an increasing proportion of their citizens eating themselves to death while populations in other parts of the world starve . Obesity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From the perspective of someone living in a famine area Europe probably looks like just as much of an 'enigma'.

The US probably appears to the world today as the British Empire did to non Brits in the middle of the 19th century.
 
Anybody else made a killing on the exchange rate variation due to the "crisis"?

Roll on another crisis please, God bless America!
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top Bottom