I am completely with Club here, we got the everything to make America be the most prosperous nation on earth for a good 300 years, and I mean to the point where no other nation holds a candle to us, but bull shit regulations make it so nations no bigger then Idaho can rival us. For example, Detroit should be able to make a car from Japan or Germany seem out of place, but regulations make it so every other car is an import, thus we are sending money to Japan/Germany and not Michigan, and stimulating a foreign economy. For America to thrive again, we need to do exactly what Club is saying, stop letting the government screw around with industry and the people, remove all regulations, and let free enterprise be free enterprise.

The only regulations killing domestic industry are environmental that I could find.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/CEOProfi ... 315&page=1

Domestic producers haven't been investing in this area and therefore can't compete. Nations across the world have higher fuel economy standards and therefore are closed to domestic products. We can't really change this. Now, our own nation is increasing its environmental laws. Suddenly you have Japanese and German factories with ready to go higher fuel economy cars and American producers without. The American companies are also racked with debt so they can hardly afford research and development. Until American cars improve on their fuel economy to meet international regulations, they will struggle to keep up with domestic regulations and meet closed doors abroad.

This isn't the first time that domestic producers had to change their strategy. Henry Ford was producing model Ts like no one's business in his highly specialized factory. He wanted to do this again and build a new factory that would specialize in a new model but he had to abandon the project due to a change in the market. That change was that a foreign company introduced the lean model which was a factory capable of switching models more easily so that it could produce a variety of cars. Americans wanted variety not cheaply mass produced cars and so Ford had to adapt.

Not that it is in the slightest bit relevant to the topic, but go compare Ford and GM's gas milage to Toyota and Honda's. I don't know how to break this to you, but the home team wins this category.


Our environmental laws are already strict. Making them more restrictive is idiotic and unnecessary.


Bullshit.


This is also wrong. Ford upgraded from the Model T to the Model A due to competition from Chevrolet.

After all is said and done, our biggest export can very easily be oil and natural gas and it should be. All that we have to do is undercut OPEC and the Russians and we will own the market. We can cover all of our own needs in 3 years and be exporting in 5 years. By doing this we can also get Europe out from under Russia's thumb. Europe may just find it's balls again if it is not totally reliant on the Russians and Muslims for it's oil. This is both a financial and political win if we do it.

I don't have as much time lately as I have had in the recent past to do research, so I apologize in advance.

http://rioleo.org/images/static/carmileage.jpg
http://www.dailyfueleconomytip.com/fuel ... omparison/

The second link seems to be more useful as the first one is simply a graph showing ratings as a nice visual aid. The second link talks about fuel economy and loosely illustrates the history that I was attempting to point out though I may have chosen a poor example using the ford model T factory method vs. the flexible method. Which by the way the more flexible method is what replaced the Ford assembly line though the new factory method may not have been directly responsible for the abandonment of the model A assembly line. I'll happily concede that cars is a weak spot of mine. Getting back to the article, the link also has a nice comparison of the top 5 fuel economy cars of Japan and America in which Japan is clearly ahead.

Comparatively speaking, our laws are very relaxed even if they seem outrageously high. The Japanese did not foresee fuel economy's importance and develop the technologies ahead of time. In the 1970s during the fuel hike many countries across the world took drastic steps to wean themselves off of their reliance on oil. Japan introduced new laws that required higher fuel efficiency to reduce fuel consumption and higher gas economy was the product. Other countries like the Netherlands I believe it is turned to wind power and the like. It is much harder to design a car to meet Japanese standards than American standards.

[scratch that]I can not reproduce the graph I was shown in class which put the MPG of cars sold onto a time line. Each line going from left to right marked the progression of one country (and California was the only state on the graph due to its higher than nation standards) through time. The U.S. was the lowest on the chart followed by California which slowly rose to be on the slightly lower than average for the industrialized world.[/scratch that]

It's amazing how trying to describe the information you're looking for suddenly provides the right search words on google to find what you're looking for

Below is a more up to date graph that I was trying to find that now takes into account new laws being passed such as the 35 MPG laws. This time line doesn't go as far back as the one I saw but it does accurately portray the much much higher requirements in Japan and the European Union as compared to the U.S. The United States has been for a long while behind the rest of the world in this field while California has been the nation's leader in advocating higher fuel economy. Please note that the majority of the graph is showing the future, not the past. Japan is already high. The U.S. plans to play catch up but nothing has actually happened yet.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/cm/thedail ... omy-lg.jpg
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmen ... y-47052002

What is the state of the economy in California?

California has made the wrong economic decisions at every turn for at least the last 30 years. From the outside looking in, it appears that the state has been hoping to fix it's problems through magic, because it certainly isn't trying to fix matters through sound fiscal policies.

California has bunches of capped oil wells. There is nothing closer to "magic" in the real world than uncapping those wells and sucking money out of the ground. All it takes is to be slightly less financially inept to gain thousands of jobs and bring billions of dollars into California's economy.

I'm looking for ways to save the US economy, not for ways to completely destroy it by emulating California on a national scale.

The government of California is broken. True. But are you a business major? Because if you're not, and I know I'm not, then this argument sounds like you're saying. "well, you live in California and I don't. Therefore, what I say is the right way to approach things and yours isn't due to this association". By mentioning magic solutions and then oil, oil drilling being what you endorse which then leaves magical solutions to the opposition, makes me also believe this is an attempt to dismiss everything I have said as being illogical fairytale solutions that wont work in the real world.

As for California, the way I see it is that conservatives got California into the mess and Democrats decided to jerry-rig the system to keep it afloat instead of slashing spending. Ronald Regan got prop 13 passed which requires a super majority for any new tax to be passed and slashed existing taxes. Now we're living with that legacy. We can't pass any new taxes. The democrats failed to get us out of the bind by not cutting spending and social programs which is how we accumulated the debt. Republican started, Democrats perpetuated. Democrats should have worked to repeal prop 13 if they wanted to keep the welfare state going or gotten on with life by cutting something.

What I am doing is taking your suggestions and showing you which ones I don't think work or are too radical. If you have good intentions but go about it the wrong way you can do more harm than good should anyone choose to listen to you. Like pie.

I'm not dismissing your economic solutions. I just haven't seen one from you yet. You have been coming up with a bunch of green stuff that has nothing to do with helping the economy. The entire idea of the topic is economic growth and ways to promote it.

So by agreeing with Club I am hurting myself? Please explain how wanting to use our own resources, and wanting to bring factories state side is hurting anyone.

Club - by listening to him you are not inherently hurting yourself, that's not what I was trying to say. About half of what Club suggests, I find myself in agreement with. A fourth of it I don't really know much about or don't have an opinion. I do want to provide alternatives or reason why not to do some of the stuff Club wants to do which I think IS coming up with ideas because its a fight to weed out the bad ideas. That is what I was attempting to argue.

He was saying that what he wants to do is come up with ideas, what I am doing is trying to show which ideas are bade ones. If there is anyone listening to Club, as I suggested you were, and Club is recommending something I think might actually be bad for the U.S. if implemented, then it is contributing to the discussion by showing how I view those ideas to be bad and prevent the ideas from spreading.

Getting factories stateside is good, but how do we plan on doing that?

As for using our own resources, the resources are finite. Following the drill baby drill approach will only increase the speed in which America will run out of American owned oil. The United States peaked in its oil production long ago. I do not understand Club where you are getting your facts that the United States has the largest oil supply in the world.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... 8rank.html

The United States is ranked 12th. I do agree with an increase in oil drilling. I just don't think we should remove all the red tape and free all of the oil to be drilled because what that will do is create an initial wave of cheap gas to ripple out into the economy only for within 50 years the oil to dry up and prices to come soaring back up and an even stronger reliance on middle eastern oil. We are bleeding wealth to the world at an alarming rate, tapping into our own gas reserves and cutting down on consumption from other countries is a great way to cut some of that bleeding off. We don't want to become independent, but rather, cut off all foreign sources except Canada and Mexico.

Sorry Club, I didn't see your post. The last one before page 3 came up where you responded to the majority of the things I had to say.

You want us to sell off all government owned land not in use by the government. I said that if we were to sell it all off, we wouldn't have anything left for a rainy day and you say that the government doesn't have the right to own the land. Now that the recap is covered, I wanted to suggest something. I like to explore the laws of unintended consequences which is why sometimes I try to come at ideas from different angles, even though I don't think its the best argument.

What if by selling off the government land, places that are meant to be kept secret like Area 51 are made easier to spot? If there are islands of government owned property with no information on it, enemy satellites then know where to look. By owning a large chunk of land, the government can hide secret facilities in a sea of government owned property.

I agree for the most part, the government shouldn't own land but I don't think selling it all off within a short period is a good idea.

There are fifty-eight national parks and hundreds of other federally managed parks, forests, and wilderness areas.[25] Altogether, the government owns 28.8% of the country's land area.[26] Most of this is protected, though some is leased for oil and gas drilling, mining, logging, or cattle ranching; 2.4% is used for military purposes.[26]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

While this is potentially bias as it comes from the Republicans (not saying Repubs are bad, just they are a political organization) 5.1 million acres are currently designated as being vacant with no definable uses.

As well, "Close to one-fifth of all the owned and leased federal buildings in the U.S. are used for housing (the second-highest category behind “office”)." But I do want to caution you guys as there are places that have become so toxic that they are uninhabitable. The United States purchased these houses and allowed the people to move elsewhere throughout the country. This has in effect created a ghost town and these houses are most likely still owned by the government, uninhabited and unfit to live in. If you don't believe me I will work on finding the source harder.

http://johnshadegg.house.gov/rsc/Federa ... 202005.pdf

I don't understand why the government needs to own houses or own completely vacant space. Those 5 million acres and houses (if people are living in them) should be sold off. That would be -instantly- 1/5th of the land sold off and then some. Opening up already developed or completely unused land to private ownership.

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There is nothing wrong with proper air filtration, but all harassment law suits must be quashed and the refineries allowed to open.[/quote]

I'm really sorry you saw me make a personal attack Club. I find it really distasteful and I had removed it after rereading what I had posted but you already saw it. Is there a particular way you had in mind to quash the harassment lawsuits? As the law is set up now, the harassment has to be proven in court and often times if convicted, the person will go to jail but more often has to pay the person they were harassing in monetary compensation. It seems like case solved as best as it can already. One can't just red stamp any claim against a refinery. I'm on board with you, it'd be great to eliminate harassment lawsuits but I'm just never satisfied with one liners when making a decision =P

When I said that "We want to milk what's bad for society for all its worth to help counter the negative effects on society. For example, prostitution taxes going to fight STDs or subsidizing STD checkups so that poor prostitutes can afford to get them." You ask me where in the constitution is this right. I am not arguing for a federal law. I don't like a lot of laws being pushed out by the feds like Obama's 'straight to the top' or Bush's 'No Child Left Behind' (the only examples of federal laws which they effectively are that I could think of). Rather, I advocate state laws. I like the friendly playground competition idea that states should be allowed to experiment with education methods or prostitution methods to find what is best.

There are states with state-wide health care systems. They may find it cheaper to create laws to help prevent the spread of STDs than to abide by liberal values.

The idea would be to create jobs while reducing are dependency on foreign oil. Sooner or a later were going to have to get off oil for heating homes and driving cars no one is going to deny that. However in the mean time it's a good idea for us to become more independant and reduce are trade deficits as well.



Nevada: 84.5%

There is pretty much jack shit in Nevada outside Vegas. There is no reason the government owns all this land.

Idaho: 50.2%

Want the hell is out in Idaho for the government to need all this land?

New Mexico: 41.8%

Besides some reservations and a few towns there’s nothing here also.

Alaska: 69.1%

Not much in this state and this is something that pissing the residents off as well.

Arizona: 48.1%

No need for this much land either.

Colorado: 36.6%

We have some military installations out here but still why is this much needed?

Utah: 57.5%

Haven’t been to this state so I can’t comment on this.

California: 45.3%

Kind of surprised here considering how populated the state is. We have a few military installations and parks here but still this a bit shocking.

Washington: 30.3%

Never been there so I can’t comment.

Oregon: 53.1%

Want the hell?

Wyoming: 42.3%

There’s nothing for as long as the eye can see.

Montana: 29.9%

???????

If the Government truly needs land for a legitimate purpose then it can use eminent domain. So the rainy day scenario doesn’t really work. The government should really only use eminent domain for infrastructure(roads, bridges, canals, etc.), military bases, and some secret facilities that’s about it. Also if the government sold let’s say 20% of that land they’d easily get a few hundred billion dollars which could be used to pay off some of our national debt, used to bail out troubled areas in the country or a state or two, or even used to balance to balance the budget for a year. There’s too much to gain from selling the land and not enough to lose.




We both know that wouldn’t happen.

California? Think about it. The west is mostly desert and mountains.

http://www.privatelandownernetwork.org/images/cal1.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FUireXgKaI4/R ... on_map.png

If the population wanted to move there, I doubt the government would flat out deny it. Looking at the two maps in conjunction really helps you figure out the relation of geography to population.

Now, look at where the feds own the land.

http://geography.sierra.cc.ca.us/Booth/ ... s_west.jpg

It matches up really well. Often times the only area where population and government owned land coincides as far as I can see on the zoomed out map is when its a national park. Where there isn't a huge population and little government owned land is most likely where you will be able to find the agricultural regions of California.

Speaking of which, look at central California. Low on population and then...

http://www.esri.com/mapmuseum/mapbook_g ... re4_lg.jpg

All those colorful dots are different regions growing different types of food. The not so colored regions seem to just represent the topography of California where nothing is grown.

The US Government is incapable of keeping any secret for any length of time.

Welcome to Area 51.

if area 51 is the only one which you can find pictures for it doesn't really prove your point. Area 51 became really famous and with popularity comes a reason to find pictures. Not to mention that the government declassified some pictures.



http://gmaps.tommangan.us/groom_lake.html
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/30209096

HINT: It's called a GST or VAT.
American companies get it back in transfers, and you earn revenue from the sale of foreign made goods.
and it's not like you don't need it really bad.

This may not be bad as a replacement for income tax.

It is not government's place to punitively tax behavior. Sin taxes are government legislating morality. Would you approve of a 150% tax on anything sold in a gay bar because it is being sold in a gay bar? If a tax is used for social engineering, that tax oversteps government's place in society and is in it's self immoral. This is another great argument to keep government's nose out of health care. The People are not the property of government. The government is the property of the People.

A better example of a moral dilemma would be people who go to the emergency room. The state has to pay for people who go into the emergency room regardless of their ability to pay. This costs us, the tax payers, because we don't allow hospitals to turn away a dieing man who can't pay to have his life saved. This is a moral issue at work, do you advocate giving hospitals the right to deny and let die? This is effectively a tax on those who pay for their own health insurance.

---

Why can't we tax more for things that are bad for us? And I am not advocating a punitive tax based on morality. I am viewing prostitution as a breeding house for diseases which then has to be treated. The same is true for smoking which leads to cancer and huge bills in treatment. Not to mention the effect of smoking on people around them. I never smoke but I am forced to walk past people who smoke on my college campus. My mom actually asked me if I started to smoke because I reek of the smell just from the 5 minutes I spend around smokers walking between classes.

What I am arguing is personal rights spilling over and hurting those around them.

A prostitute who doesn't have to prove that they are clean can give an unsuspecting patron a STD like aids or hepatitis C.
A person who smokes can give a person lung cancer through second hand smoke.

As a reflection back to being against regulation in banking, do you appose regulation in general? The FDA makes meat factories test for diseases like mad cow disease and such. This means that the FDA increases the cost of doing business which is passed onto the consumer because a meat company can't sell us meat that is already decomposing and/or is injurious to our health. The same can also be applied for prostitutes.

As for taxing, I suppose prostitution is a bad example for me to argue on because it can be better solved through regulation than through taxation. Smoking, on the other hand, is much harder. How do you sew a person for giving you lung cancer from second hand smoke if it's the accumulation of hundreds of people smoking that you are forced to be around? The simple answer would be taxes. It would be impossible to sew the smoking community collectively for causing cancer so the only other viable alternative is to increase taxes on smoking, not on the pretext of trying to get them to stop, but because they have to pay for what they are inflicting onto others.

The American ship of state is headed over a cliff (financially speaking):

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... a8xAghPS8I

If the US federal government loses its AAA credit rating, as they very well could, you're going to see a financial and economic crisis that's going to make the last 2 years look like a cakewalk.

The US no longer has the luxury of debating the finer points of fiscal policy or the merits of this tax over that. ALL taxes now have to be raised, and new ones (like a VAT) added on to boot. All non-essential spending has to be slashed. That's the only way to avoid what I know is coming. Unfortunately, American politicians just don't seem to get it. I've never seen the US government and Congress in a more dysfunctional state, and more oblivious to the long-term threat they're causing by their very own actions.

Riding a motorcycle, bicycling, rock climbing, skate boarding, roller blading and such can also lead to serious life long injuries, anal sex can lead to serious infections and pre-marital sex leads to single parenthood. One could easily say that one views these things to be bad for us and a drag on society. If people with similar views to those that I stated come to power (very likely in 2010 and 2012), items associated with the above activities could face the very same unfair, disproportionate taxes that you propose for the activities that you do not like. Allowing the government to disproportionately tax the things that you do not like, grants the government the ability to pick and choose what activities it does and does not like and will abusively tax, depending who is in power. This is why "sin taxes" should be illegal. It is not government's place to engineer society.

Less government interference and low taxes equals increased commerce and more employment which actually brings in more tax money than more government interference and higher taxes which strangle commerce and create higher unemployment.

You're making too many assumptions. The net benefits of society biking, rock climbing, skate boarding and roller blading are quantifiable in regards to health care alone. How the hell do you tax anal and pre-marital sex? Where is what you've hypothesized in Canada or Europe?