Fighting and losing wars are bad for economies, winning seems to work pretty well….sure didn’t hurt the US for how many decades? I told my daughter the meal we were eating at a restaurant was because we won WWII. For the same reason that if you’re living within your means currently you’re actually living beyond your means in a larger sense – being held up by the dying petrodollar. Fuck, Bretton Woods in ’44 – the war wasn’t over and they were carving it all up….I think this piece is O.K., but lacking in too many areas to be worth remembering.
Tommy
June 27, 2014 2:30 pm
And I’ll tell you something else, I’m not at all comfortable with the way that gal in the first frame is touching those clearly phallic symbols – you just know she’s thinking of Johnny and his big shell. HehHehHeh
Bostonbob
June 27, 2014 2:48 pm
Tommy,
Someone has to spit polish the shellls.
Bob.
IndenturedServant
June 27, 2014 4:14 pm
Tommy says:
“Fighting and losing wars are bad for economies, winning seems to work pretty well….sure didn’t hurt the US for how many decades?”
Some might argue that it was the unfair, advantage we gained by “winning” WWII that lead directly to the problems we have now. With the disproportionate manufacturing capability we built up before and during the war and retained long afterward came an inevitable ramping down of that same ability that leaves us where we are today. It was unsustainable, artificial and falsely taught Americans that the good times would roll on forever. The entire country bankrolled it’s future on living beyond its means.
Tommy
June 27, 2014 4:52 pm
@I_S, you’re right. I often laugh about how we laud the materialism and the worship of ‘stuff’, when making ‘stuff’ is exactly what gave America the memories of better times and temporary but fleeting good times. Damn, to be a young man back in the fifties and sixties……that had to be a frickin’ blast.
Another topic, but I remember when Mexico made everything, then Korea, Phillipines, Taiwan, and whoever until the holy grail of cheap shit China came along.
IndenturedServant
June 27, 2014 9:46 pm
Tommy, I figure being born in about 1940 would have suited me just fine. I’d have caught that massive expansion of opportunity and if I’d survived Vietnam I’d just about have one foot on a banana peel and the other in my grave about now. Instead I get to hang around and experience the destruction of what may have been the greatest experiment in self rule ever.
el Coyote
June 28, 2014 12:31 am
Someone said that all economic issues are dealt with on a real-time basis, that there is no indebting (to coin a word) our grand-kids. We may impact the economy in a way that they inherit a poor country rather than a rich one. In support of this idea, I offer: the silent generation left the boomers with a rich country but the boomers did not inherit a windfall, they still had to go to work. The next generation will not inherit a debt, they will still have to go to work at something, whether it pays$15/hr or $1/hr.
As for the broken window fallacy, no need to limit it to the examples offered. We have a situation where many broken windows are impacting the current economy, they are: cell phone plans, cable tv, traffic tickets, parking fees, sports, concerts, (who the fuck decided that so called athletes deserve millions while accountants and doctors scrape by on less than 9 figures?) air travel, TSA inspectors, etc. People actually have money but it is being spent on shit boomers never spent it on. Boomers had drugs but they also had responsibilities to meet. Ah shit, that’s a different topic.
Anyways, I circle back to my previous comment, immigrants (boo) have a lower concept of what constitutes ‘the bear necessities’. GenXers or whatever they are called, think gadgets are important and spend their life earnings on that shit instead of getting married and raising a family on that money.
By the way, i read today that immigrants (booo) absorbed all the job growth of the last decade. Maybe because they didn’t blow the check on a new flatscreen and 300 cable channels including prmium channels. They actually had money left over to pay the nut on a rental and an old junker.
Fighting and losing wars are bad for economies, winning seems to work pretty well….sure didn’t hurt the US for how many decades? I told my daughter the meal we were eating at a restaurant was because we won WWII. For the same reason that if you’re living within your means currently you’re actually living beyond your means in a larger sense – being held up by the dying petrodollar. Fuck, Bretton Woods in ’44 – the war wasn’t over and they were carving it all up….I think this piece is O.K., but lacking in too many areas to be worth remembering.
And I’ll tell you something else, I’m not at all comfortable with the way that gal in the first frame is touching those clearly phallic symbols – you just know she’s thinking of Johnny and his big shell. HehHehHeh
Tommy,
Someone has to spit polish the shellls.
Bob.
Tommy says:
“Fighting and losing wars are bad for economies, winning seems to work pretty well….sure didn’t hurt the US for how many decades?”
Some might argue that it was the unfair, advantage we gained by “winning” WWII that lead directly to the problems we have now. With the disproportionate manufacturing capability we built up before and during the war and retained long afterward came an inevitable ramping down of that same ability that leaves us where we are today. It was unsustainable, artificial and falsely taught Americans that the good times would roll on forever. The entire country bankrolled it’s future on living beyond its means.
@I_S, you’re right. I often laugh about how we laud the materialism and the worship of ‘stuff’, when making ‘stuff’ is exactly what gave America the memories of better times and temporary but fleeting good times. Damn, to be a young man back in the fifties and sixties……that had to be a frickin’ blast.
Another topic, but I remember when Mexico made everything, then Korea, Phillipines, Taiwan, and whoever until the holy grail of cheap shit China came along.
Tommy, I figure being born in about 1940 would have suited me just fine. I’d have caught that massive expansion of opportunity and if I’d survived Vietnam I’d just about have one foot on a banana peel and the other in my grave about now. Instead I get to hang around and experience the destruction of what may have been the greatest experiment in self rule ever.
Someone said that all economic issues are dealt with on a real-time basis, that there is no indebting (to coin a word) our grand-kids. We may impact the economy in a way that they inherit a poor country rather than a rich one. In support of this idea, I offer: the silent generation left the boomers with a rich country but the boomers did not inherit a windfall, they still had to go to work. The next generation will not inherit a debt, they will still have to go to work at something, whether it pays$15/hr or $1/hr.
As for the broken window fallacy, no need to limit it to the examples offered. We have a situation where many broken windows are impacting the current economy, they are: cell phone plans, cable tv, traffic tickets, parking fees, sports, concerts, (who the fuck decided that so called athletes deserve millions while accountants and doctors scrape by on less than 9 figures?) air travel, TSA inspectors, etc. People actually have money but it is being spent on shit boomers never spent it on. Boomers had drugs but they also had responsibilities to meet. Ah shit, that’s a different topic.
Anyways, I circle back to my previous comment, immigrants (boo) have a lower concept of what constitutes ‘the bear necessities’. GenXers or whatever they are called, think gadgets are important and spend their life earnings on that shit instead of getting married and raising a family on that money.
By the way, i read today that immigrants (booo) absorbed all the job growth of the last decade. Maybe because they didn’t blow the check on a new flatscreen and 300 cable channels including prmium channels. They actually had money left over to pay the nut on a rental and an old junker.