no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

Here are some things that are great about the United States, and there are definitely some things that are not so great.


The following are 35 strange facts about America that most Americans would be shocked to learn…


#1 The amount of cement that China used from 2011 to 2013 was greater than the total amount of cement that the
United States used during the entire 20th century.
#2 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.
#3 It costs the U.S. government 1.8 cents to mint a penny and 9.4 cents to mint a nickel.
#4 Almost half of all Americans ( 47 percent) do not put a single penny out of their paychecks into savings.
#5 Apple has more money than the U.S. Treasury?
#6 The state of Alaska is 429 times larger than the state of Rhode Island is.
But Rhode Island has a significantly larger population than Alaska does.
#7 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.
#8 The city of Juneau, Alaska is about 3,000 square miles in size.
It is actually larger than the entire state of Delaware.
#9 When LBJ’s “War on Poverty” began, less than 10 percent of all U.S. children were growing up in single parent households. and that is exactly what socialism is DESIGNED to do
Today, that number has skyrocketed to 33 percent.
#10 In 1950, less than 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents.
Today, that number is over 40 percent. that and #11 go together. Also keep in mind that as the concept of marriage is devalued, the number of children born to married couples goes down dirastically
#11 The poverty rate for households that are led by a married couple is 6.8 percent.
For households that are led by a female single parent, the poverty rate is 37.1 percent.
#12 In 2013, women earned 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees that were awarded that year in the United States.
#13 According to the CDC, 34.6 percent of all men in the U.S. are obese at this point.
#14 The average supermarket in the United States wastes about 3,000 pounds of food each year.
#15 Right now, more than 200 million people around the planet are officially considered to be unemployed.
Meanwhile, approximately 20 percent of the garbage that goes into our landfills is food.
#16 There is a city in Bangladesh called Dhaka where workers are paid just one dollar for every 1,000 bricks that they carry.
Meanwhile, the “inactivity rate” for men in their prime working years in the United States is hovering near record high levels.
#17 According to one recent survey, 81 percent of Russians now have a negative view of the United States.
That is much higher than at the end of the Cold War era.
#18 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.
#19 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California.
But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.
#20 One recent survey discovered that “ a steady job” is the number one thing that American women are looking for in a husband, and another survey discovered that 75 percent of women would have a serious problem dating an unemployed man.
#21 According to a study conducted by economist Carl Benedikt Frey and engineer Michael Osborne, 47 percent of the jobs in the
United States could soon be lost to computers, robots and other forms of technology. and unfortunately the groups reproducing the fastest in America are the functionally illiterate, most of whom are on welfare
#22 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.
#23 The original name of the city of Atlanta was “Terminus“.
#24 The state with the most millionaires per capita is Maryland.
#25 There are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.
#26 86 percent of men include “having children” in their definition of success.
For women, that number is only 73 percent.
#27 One survey of 50-year-old men in the U.S. found that only 12 percent of them said that they were “very happy”.
#28 The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people. And America has a much larger land mass and fewer people per square mile, therefore public t***sportation is not always a good idea, like in Montana for instance.
Japan only has 593 for every 1,000 people, and Germany only has 540 for every 1,000 people.
#29 The average American spends more than 10 hours a day using an electronic device.
#30 48 percent of all Americans do not have any emergency supplies in their homes whatsoever.
#31 There are three towns in the United States that have the name “ Santa Claus“.
#32 There is actually a town in Michigan called “ Hell“.
there is a town on PA called Intercourse and one called Climax
#33 There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body.
If they were stretched out in a single line, they could go around the planet more than twice. [color =red] that sounds really painful[/color]


#34 If you have no debt and also have 10 dollars in your wallet that you are wealthier
than 25 percent of all Americans?


#35 By the time an American child reaches the age of 18, that child will have seen approximately 40,000 murders on television?


Once upon a time we were the most loved and most respected nation on the entire planet, but those days are gone.
We have wrecked our economy, we have lost our values and we have fumbled away our future.
But if you look close enough, you can still see many of the things that once made this country a shining beacon to the rest of the world.
This article includes some weird facts, some fun facts, but also some very troubling facts.
If we are ever going to change course as a nation, we need to come to grips with just how far we have fallen.

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

Unfortunately the people in charge are pushing us closer to falling. With everyone is a victim mentality and no morals except if it feels good do it we are on a slow road to self destruction.

MarvinSussman

I have a plan to change our course as a nation:

Although politicians of every stripe flood v**ers with complaints of “unsustainable debt”, Congress still borrows money unnecessarily by not rescinding a law that was intended only for the former gold standard regime. That law requires that the Treasury auction an amount of interest-bearing treasuries at least equal to the annual federal budget deficit. Under the gold standard, those treasuries provided savers with a better investment than gold to dissuade them from exchanging cash for the metal and depleting our gold supply. The gold standard regime failed when our large trade deficit finally allowed foreign governments to threaten depletion of our store. Since 1973, we have had fiat currency with a floating currency exchange rate and there is no further need to protect our gold supply. The Treasury could now stop its auctions but, since the law is still the law, Congress still borrows.

Should the Treasury stop its auctions? Absolutely not! The ultra-safe, interest-bearing instruments are needed for bank reserves, insurance and pension funds, trade collateral, etc. But, since inflation is the only limit on Congress’ fiat spending, there is no reason to tie Congress’ need to spend to the market’s need for treasuries. During World War II, our massive spending, effectively without borrowing, was followed by 35 years of prosperity. Break the tie and spend as much as can safely be spent and auction as much as can safely be auctioned - each independently!

Despite the fact that fiat currency allows Congress to spend without borrowing or taxing, almost all v**ers wrongly believe that federal tax revenue provides Congress with income for spending. In fact, only the reverse is true: Congress’ spending provides taxpayers with taxable income, most of which becomes federal tax revenue. The essential function of the income tax is to prevent harmful inflation and the only harmful consequence of over-spending and/or under-taxing is inflation that the Fed cannot keep below 3% with interest rates less than 5%.

When harmful inflation is not a concern, it is senseless for Congress to avoid deficit spending instead of hiring idle resources for our nation’s needs. When Congress’ spending limits tax revenue and tax revenue limits Congress’ spending, that positive feedback tends to drive our economy toward deflation and recession. This essay opposes that senseless dependency and resulting instability by proposing rational rules for Congress’ spending and taxing.

Since we net import goods, we net export money and, to avoid deflation and depression, we must replenish our leaking currency supply. Therefore, our annual federal budget deficit must exceed our annual trade deficit. In fact, we need a large public debt because the reserve currency status of the US dollar gives our economy a valuable trade advantage. The US dollar is a reserve currency only because we have a large debt and because about half of it is owned by foreigners. Foreign and domestic buyers invest large amounts in trade collateral and more than half of them use interest-bearing US treasuries to avoid the cost of exchanging currency and to protect their trade collateral somewhat from inflation. These costs are very important compared to their profit margins.

For almost two centuries, Britain’s pound sterling was the world’s reserve currency and their debt-to-GDP ratio grew to more than three times our current 72 % without exciting the false cries of “unsustainable debt” now raised by a majority of Congress. While cutting spending to gain lower taxes, the majority claims that the debt interest expense will bust the budget when the “bond vigilantes” drive up interest rates. In fact, those rates are dependent, not on the market, but mainly on the overnight federal funds rate set by the Fed. Any upward drift of interest rates will be limited by arbitragers seeking profit when minor differences in various interest rates appear. Debt will become a problem only if we neglect our infrastructure and fall behind other nations in productivity. Barring a lack of physical resources, the greatest danger to our economy is not debt but either harmful inflation or deflation.

In any case, the taxpayer need not be concerned about the federal debt because the Treasury profits greatly from auctioning treasuries. For the first half of the 2015 fiscal year, the Treasury’s auction receipts exceeded the sum of redemptions plus debt interest expense by over $233 B. (Google the “Daily Treasury Statement” of April 1, 2015: https://www.fms.treas.gov/fmsweb/viewDTSFiles?dir=w&fname=15040100.txt). For comparison, that semi-annual profit is about three times the current annual Social Security deficit. The public debt is managed every year, not by taxes, but by a virtual bond rollover. The national debt (which should not be reduced) is not the taxpayer’s burden!

Ideally, Congress should spend just enough on infrastructures to use all our idle resources and tax barely enough to prevent harmful inflation. The ideal fiscal target for Congress is the onset of harmful inflation with moderate interest rates. To achieve that in practice, the administration would have to schedule infrastructure projects to barely avoid a shortage of resources and Congress would have to regulate inflation by granting or revoking tax rebates. That implies a higher tax level from which rebates could then be granted or revoked, as needed.

In the subtraction: A – B = C, adding the same quantity to both A and B will yield the same value of C. Likewise, high spending and high tax rates can produce similar deficits to those produced by low spending and low tax rates but the economic difference can be great. When we had high spending and high tax rates, we built the Hoover Dam and the TVA, permitting the electrification of every American farm, the building of the atom bomb, and victory over Japan. Over the following 35 years, we housed and educated the war veterans, saved Europe with the Marshall Plan, created nuclear energy, built the Interstate Highway System, put a man on the moon, and rearmed.

But now, after three decades of lower income tax rates, we have a crumbling infrastructure because Congress pretends to fear that spending will bring inflation. But since the 2008 collapse, the Fed has failed to raise our inflation rate up to 2%. One index of a nation’s inflation is its “cash on hand” (total bank deposits plus circulating currency). Prosperous Switzerland’s “cash on hand”-to-GDP ratio is more than twice as large as ours and its sovereign ten-year bonds now have a negative interest rate! So, Congress could increase spending, especially with almost a third of our adult population not in the work force and many millions more seeking full-time work. Besides, the chief source of inflation is excessive bank lending during prosperity and the only cure for that is effective bank regulation which is fiercely opposed by the same Congress majority. Of course, inflation caused by a lack of resources can only be remedied by imposed rationing or self-rationing of the lacked resource.

The Interstate Highway System should not be the final major investment ever made by the federal government. With idle resources, Congress could build enough desalination plants to furnish all our water needs. Congress built the TVA and could now fix the 60,000 bridges and the 4,000 dams in critical need of repair. Congress electrified every American farm and could now put solar panels on every American roof to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and minimize the importance of the Middle East. Further energy savings could come when almost frictionless trains fly at jet-like speeds through tubes and make long-haul trucking obsolete. There should be no end to new infrastructure, financed always and only by Congress. Even to fill potholes, states and communities cannot bank on their taxpayers v****g for a tax increase, never mind keeping us the world’s productivity leader!

China is building infrastructure 24/7, without inflation. Our grandchildren deserve as much as theirs. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Much of the above was taken from the following authors, whose books are available from Amazon for about $10:
Mark Blyth, Brown University Prof. of International Political Economy, author of “Austerity”, (Oxford University Press) Francis X Cavanaugh, US Treasury economist for over 30 years, author of: ’’The T***h about the National Debt: Five Myths and One Reality’’ (Harvard Business School Press);
Dr. Stephanie Kelton, Chairperson of the Economics Department at UMKC and currently Chief Economist for the Senate Budget Committee. She has a blog at NewEconomicPerspectives.org.
Warren Mosler, economist, author of: ‘’Seven Deadly Frauds of Economic Policy’’ (Oxford University Press); Frank N Newman, former Deputy Secretary of the US Treasury, author of: ‘’Freedom from National Debt’ (Two Harbors Press);

© 2015 Marvin Sussman All Rights Reserved. Permission granted only to copy entirely.

robmull Loc: florida

You will notice that about all of the Cities and States in America that are failing, JFlorio, are run into the ground by demonrats. Perhaps its a "destroy America" ideology or just pure greed - all the demonrat politicians [black and white] seem to be driving Cadillac's and flying around the world in huge jumbo-jets - and [their] "charge" is crime, poverty and ghetto infested with usually black criminals taking the spot-light. Hummmmmm.

Anonymous Loc: Hamtucket jersey city

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

Just looked in my wallet. I'm loaded. Take me about a minute at Bass Pro Shop to be unloaded

no propaganda please Loc: moon orbiting the third rock from the sun

That is a scary concept isn't it? Hey we have no debt, and maybe twenty five thousand in the bank. Guess we are SUPER RICH!!! Actually with all the love we have and share, even if we were in debt, we would be super rich

Anonymous Loc: Hamtucket jersey city

That last part was pretty poetic, it's true, thank god we don't live in a third world country. And I got 20 Gs in savings with absolutely 0 debt, that most make me upper class lol

Anonymous Loc: Hamtucket jersey city

I just looked it up 25 percent of Americans have more debt than savings, that's crazy.

Anonymous Loc: Hamtucket jersey city

Hey a lot of the things you get at bass pro shop can pay for themselves, 50 dollar fishing rod, you only need to make 5 meals out of that fishing rod until it pays for itself.

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

In that case I am rich. Caught a 42 lb. Kingfish 2 weeks ago.

Anonymous Loc: Hamtucket jersey city

That'll pay for 10 poles lol or a gun. Maybe instead of giving out free food stamps we should give people free fishing rods.

JFlorio Loc: Seminole Florida

Goes right along with that whole don't give a man a fish teach a man how to fish.

PoppaGringo Loc: Muslim City, Mexifornia, B.R.

:thumbup:

mwdegutis Loc: Illinois