I challenge the notion that "people working" in and of itself means "economic growth." That makes about as much sense as equating easy credit with economic growth. It's not like the money simply materializes from thin air; it must come from somewhere else. Easy credit creates a mirage as people spend beyond their means. Putting people to work in wasteful, redundant projects creates an illusion of prosperity among the people working, perhaps, but every penny those projects suck up is one less penny that can be used for more productive purposes. The best you can say for our current transportation system is it only reshuffles money, with hopefully no negative consequences to other economic sectors. But I doubt its effects are so benign.

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How is fixing our delapitating infrastructure wasteful and redundant? You want to just watch our civilation crumble. Yeah it will cost money and reshuffle as you put it, but where else could the government cut back? Could we possibly start using the abundant oil reserves we have or do we need to continue getting raped by the Arabs? How did we get out of the Great Depression Non? We stopped making tanks and artillary and started building the greatest in the history of the world. These aren't outdated concepts, we've all just become complacent.

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I don't understand your argument. I AM proposing that we rebuild our aging infrastructure. I'm just arguing we should use better technologies instead of throwing our money at the same tired old techniques in the name of "putting people to work." I am sure there was great weeping and lamentation in the Buggy Whip Makers Union with the advent of the automobile, but their time had past. If the only way these people can stay employed is to build substandard structures, then their time is past too and they need to find new avenues of employment.

I am a huge proponent of the coming Green Revolution, which some unions believe could bring as much as $4 trillion into our economy. We should be taking the lead as a nation in manufacturing wind, solar, geothermal, and nuclear equipment, as well as other innovative technologies. That is the future. That is what will restore our economy. Sending the same backhoes over the same highways year after year because of our deliberate negligence in using substandard materials will only divert the funds from the projects that truly can rejuvenate our land.

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Well when you come up with a hover car for me, I'll drive, until then I'll have to use my pickup.

My argument Non is that we need to get everyone working and I don't care if they are building solar panels, flux capacitors, or light sabers. The way out of this mess is to reduce unemployment by any means necessary. I bring up the infrastructure because there are a lot bridges and highways around the country in bad shape and it would be a good place to start.

Now on to the green. I agree with you except for the costs. All that new technology is expensive because the inventors need to be paid first. Until then the fossil fuels are cheap. We have about 8 coal fed power plants less than 60 miles away. Are we suppose to just shut them down and build a couple nucs? It is a nice concept for the environment, but instead of that they've come up with a scrubber stackhouse that reduces the polution emissions exponentially. What's better for the short term?

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The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had 100% employment with their production lines running always at maximum capacity. They also had vast storehouses of substandard products that could never be used sold -- but everyone was working! As Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt points out in his book The Goal, it's a myth that constant production is a sign of productivity or profitability. One of the quickest ways to go bankrupt is to accumulate massive inventories. The products your employees manufacture need to be products that can be moved; otherwise they simply sit there as a millstone around your company's neck. Output needs to be calibrated to consumption. If you're putting your energies into production for a market that isn't there, you might be employing people for the short term, but you're unemploying them for the long term.

Work is not always better than non-work for the economy, and 100% employment is rarely, if ever, an optimal situation. After all, 100% employment is easy to create: you just eliminate the use of technology and put everyone to work at menial tasks. Of course, the efficiency of such a system is abysmal and productivity is low. It may suck for individuals in the short term, but often workers need to be unemployed to free them up for use in other sectors of the economy. It is far more important that the workers who are employed are contributing to the health of the economy than that everyone is working for the sake of working.

I never said we should be shutting down our coal plants. I said that as a nation, we should be taking the lead in the manufacturing of technologies that will help rebuild our infrastructure. Currently, Denmark leads the world in manufacturing of wind turbines. There is no reason why the United States could not supplant that tiny nation. We don't have to sell all these components to ourselves -- we can export them all over the world. My squad leader in my reserve unit builds wind farms in countries throughout the Western Hemisphere.

We don't have to tear down our fossil-fuel infrastructure, but as it reaches obsolescence, it should be replaced with better technology. When coal plants are shut down, they should be replaced with wind, solar, or nuclear. Instead of building new gas stations or repairing old ones, we should be replacing them with a new infrastructure, whether that's natural gas, hydrogen, or some other modality.

These technologies are expensive, partly because they're new but mostly because they are not widely used. As supply becomes more readily available and demand grows, prices will drop.

The problem is that we are too short sighted in this country. If our actions won't show a profit on this year's balance sheet, we shy away from them. By contrast, over the past few years in Japan, the free-market entrepreneurs have been spending untold billions of dollars building a fiber optic infrastructure, losing frightful sums of money in the short term and knowing full well they won't realize a profit on their investment for as many as 50 years. But they also know that their children and their grandchildren will reap the benefits down the road. I wish our economic system would become more far sighted like this.

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That's because greed runs our economy. Are we not sophisticated enough to make an engine run 60 miles to the gallon? Why doesn't it happen, because oil PACs run Washington.

But, I don't agree with you on people working. Hell, I think we should even be using that huge resource called "residents of the state" to be doing the shit jobs around the country. Every time there is a hail storm causing massive destruction, guess what, there's a huge work force waiting to pitch in. Nothing more rehabilitating than 95 degrees on a roof. Instead of paying illegals under the table, contractors could just make a donation to the state. Win win all the way around.

Non, an able bodied man has his pride on the line when he is unemployed. Yeah, there some merit to what you say, but right now we have double digit unemployment in this country and something drastic needs to happen. I'm all for your technological advances, but we are becoming too "Jetsons like" and there is still some things we need to do with our hands and backs, like rebuild our country.

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I presume by this you mean prisoners. I am very much opposed to either the retributive or rehabilitative models of punishment. I favor the restitutive model. So while I do agree that convicted criminals should be working, I believe they should be specifically working in the interests of whomever they hard. You steal a Honda Civic, you work for the victim for as long as it takes to pay them back. You rob a bank of a half million dollars, you become that bank's slave until you've worked the debt off. You cut a man's arm off, he sues you in civil court and you're her slave until you've paid off the judgment. (And I think civil judgments should be legally collectable.) You rape a woman -- she gets to cut your balls off and . . . well, maybe you're her slave for life. That would be between her and the courts.



As long as they were working for their victims, fine. Otherwise, I strongly oppose such an idea. We already have a similar system in our federal prisoners. It's called UNICOR. Federal procurement regulations mandate that whenever possible, the federal government purchase products manufactured by UNICOR, which runs off prison labor that pays prisoners pennies an hour. As far as I'm concerned, this represents an unfair competition between the government and free market. There's no way private companies can pay their employees this little. The government should never be competing against the free market -- it's the free market that pays the taxes that sustain the government.



Then let him go back to school and develop marketable skills. Or join an apprenticeship program where he will be paid to learn. Or better yet, start his own business and create employment for himself and others. In Germany, there are people who make their living picking up empties after bar time. More power to them! Better that than starve.

There's always something a man of pride can do. He doesn't have to lean on the government. Hell, he can join the military if he wants to.

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Glad to hear that you are going to college without any kind of U.S. government financial assistance.

Yep. I am a total hypocrite, as I've admitted many times before. I actually turned down the educational assistance when I first joined the army (I have the paperwork to prove it) and didn't start taking it till this year, my third year of college.

The only reason I can rationalize it in my own head is that when I get my job, I'll have paid back in taxes all the benefits I've taken in about two or three years. But I still feel guilty about it.

On the other hand, educational assistance is the only veterans benefit I'm using. I've gotten boxes of mail over the past few years detailing all the programs I'm eligible for, and I'm not using any of them. If the government is going to provide veterans benefits, I think an education is a great idea: you postpone your education for years when you join the military, so getting a jump on that when you get out seems like a great idea. If nothing else, it increases the amount of taxes you'll be paying back after you graduate. I don't think the government owes most vets lifetime health benefits or anything like that, though. We did a job, we got paid for it, we got out, now we're civilians. Time to move on.

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While I can hold a certain amount of respect for admitting to your hypocrisy, you are indeed rationalizing.

You are a fairly intelligent young man NSD, but you are also idealistically naive in some respects.
You tout your "high standards" concerning how others should live their lives without knowing anything about their circumstances, yet you create a more attractive explanation of why your life is different.

Not everyone has the God given gifts of good mental and physical health, and not everyone is capable of higher education / training.
And yet many of these people are some of the most productive members of our society. Good, honest, hard-working, caring people, that through no fault of their own, find themselves in very hard times indeed.
They are the most vulnerable in a bad economy.

I believe that you will do well in your life ambitions, but you can not extend or dictate your somewhat narrow approach to how others live their lives.
Your viewpoints in this regard are somewhat ironic, considering your take on marriage and monogamy.

I am not trying to be over critical of you NSD, but with your own statements you have shown that you still have much to learn young Padawan.

It would be interesting to travel forward in time, to hear your view points say 40 years from now.