On Nov 11, 12:27 am, "John W." <worthj1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Nov 10, 1:02 am, Declan Murphy <declan_mur...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I don't have any debts anymore, but provided you can a) repay it, and
> > b) it helps you purchase something of tangible value to you, there is
> > no problem, nor should there be any sense of shame involved.
>
> And this is the main problem we're facing. People use their credit
> cards not based on whether or not they can actually pay for the item
> they're buying but based on their ability to make the minimum payment.
> For some reason people believe that's all they need to do. (At this
> point I typically rant on the culture we have of doing 'just enough to
> get by'.)

When you say people, is it like Robert Downey Jr's character in tropic
thunder when he says "What do you mean, you people" And more
importantly, do you wave your hands around while you rant? and where &
when can we see the video?

> > Things probably look quite different when viewed from inside the
> > goldfish bowl, but reading the US economy from abroad and from the
> > point of view of an outsider, it isn't just the large consumer debt
> > and associated low savings, but also public sector debt that is a
> > major concern. Interest payments alone now account for 9% of federal
> > expenditure, which is equivalent to roughly half of the total defence
> > budget, and rising quickly.
>
> True. From what I understand a good deal of this is due to Bush's
> policies and the need to fund the war rather than the homefront. A
> great story ran on NPR a couple of months back. There is a county in
> Texas on the Mexican border, and the highway that runs through that
> town is heavily used to traffic drugs. The police department has the
> best of everything: Dodge Chargers, better body armor than the
> military, etc. The reason is that there is a law that says they get to
> keep any confiscated drug money; the drugs, of course, they must
> destroy. When the Federal Government cut back on the financing for
> local law enforcement the county decided to make use of that law; they
> openly admit that they don't stop the drugs going north but instead
> stop the money going south. The sherrif said that's about the only way
> they can have enough money to operate.

I've no idea how we got from interest payments to drugs, but in terms
of tangents, that was impressively American :-)

> > Without a significant increase in taxation
>
> Whoa, not in this country. We'll cut taxes until it kills us. Which
> will probably happen.

What you mean like running continous budget deficits even in boom
years and putting off maintenance until bridges fall down and levee
banks break? Oh hang on.

> > There is a possibility that the
> > US will actually make Japan look like a country that has its shit
> > together.
>
> I might have said this at some other point, but the US is like that
> really talented, really smart, really capable kid that every high
> school has, the guy that has so much potential... but doesn't do a
> damn thing with it and instead goofs off all day.

That would probably be fine with the rest of the world if the kid
goofing off didn't keep dragging everyone else into detention.