The ball is starting to pick up speed,,,, hang on folks....

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/mcdonalds-january-sales-down-1-9-percent-worse-13034007...


this will only get worse as consumers (most unknowingly) get squeezed like lemons.....the title of this thread is guaranteed with news like this.

lol.....hide and watch...

so the mobil station we buy fuel at told me the gallons sold for nov/dec 12 were 50k gallons off 2011.....to me that says that at one station in bakersfield that @ 13 miles per gallon 650,000 miles were not driven in 12 over 11.......@ 1 gas station.....houston i see a problem.

I've been spending less every year since about 2005. When the economy collapsed in 2008 I had to take some major austerity measures. Things picked up in 2010 for a bit, but it's been pretty flat since then.

My best earning years were from 1995 to 2004. Then project budgets started getting squeezed and cutbacks on crew hit my business pretty hard. And of course when I started spending more time working in racing that affected my income. As most of you already know, you don't get into racing to make a lot of money. It's more a labor of love than a wealth builder, lol

But when I saw someone spent $4.2 million on the original Batmobile and someone else spent $1.1 million on a 2014 Stingray at the Barrett-Jackson auction last month I think we can safely say that the people that are adversely affected by this economy are not the champagne and lobsters crowd.

Let's hope we can take a honest look at what drives and grows the economy and look at what works and what doesn't. There is plenty of information out there to get the answers. The trick is looking with open eyes and hearts and not to let long held biases to cloud our analysis.

dscEvents wrote on 02/11/13 at 4:27pm:




i would love to hear your solutions.

increased jobs and increased productivity are the only two things to fix this in my opinion.

and in an economy where 70% of it is you and me spending there doesnt look like there will be a quick fix soon....again jmo.

FASTMIKE wrote on 02/12/13 at 5:41am:


You are right Mike, a quick fix is not in the cards. But since you asked (and you may regret asking) here are a few ideas.

The first thing needed is that people should do their own research.

Turn off talk radio, Fox News, and even CNN. The "He Said/She Said" nature of cable news often clouds the truth in the effort to give the illusion of "balance". Online blogs are mostly agenda driven and usually only present one-sided arguments that damage their information value. Liberals go to MSNBC or MoveOn.org to hear what they want to hear and conservatives do the same by going to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh for their daily dose of "news". Pure data is harder to find, but it does exist. It just takes more effort and a fair and open mind.

My solutions are way too detailed to express in one page. I will try to give a few solutions, but I could probably write a book on each trying to describe my solutions in specific details. But in a nutshell:

1.)   Let's first put to rest the fallacy of supply-side economic policies. Or what some call "trickle down economics". These policies have been in place since the 1980's. I could give you reams of data over the past 30 years of how these policies don't live up to their billing and actually result in the opposite of what it is supposed to do. The nations wealth has actually "trickled up" as a result of "trickle down". I could give you data from both conservative and liberal economists that show the same results. It shows that as policies designed to favor the wealthy take effect, the wealth does not trickle down through higher wages and jobs. It actually stays at the top increasing wealth at the upper level while wages remain flat or actually decline for those at the bottom. Tax policies should reflect these facts. And before you give me the "but the wealthy pay most of the taxes" line you should know this. When you figure in ALL taxes and not just the income tax it turns out that most of us with modest means actually pay most of the taxes collected in the US.  Duane was correct when we were debating the Phil Michelson rant when he pointed out that he and I probably pay a higher percentage of our income in taxes than Phil does when gas, sales, payroll, and property taxes are figured in. And let's not forget that the road to increasing deficits and our big national debt started in the 1980's when supply-sider policies came into favor.

2)  Wall Street Regulation. One of the primary reasons for the economic collapse that ended up killing jobs and investment is how the nature of our financial markets has evolved over the past 30 years. Banking institutions used to be a means of increasing capital for business that actually built things and contributed to the economy. Starting with the development of LBO's in the 1980's all the way to the exotic financial products invented by investment banks in the 90's we got away from building businesses and instead started to focus on financial transactions. LBO's (Leveraged Buy Outs) were developed as a way for corporate owners and managers to make millions by using a public companies assets as collateral for debt used to take a company private. These deals caused American corporations to add huge amounts of debt to their balance sheets to pay off junk bonds that were sold to pay off shareholders. This increase in corporate debt weakened otherwise strong companies. The only real winners were the investment banks and deal makers who were paid huge transaction fees while the companies, the original corporate bondholders, and the employees got screwed. Fast forward to the 2000's when these same wheeler dealers on Wall Street devised mortgage -backed securities, Credit Default Swaps, and other exotic financial schemes that produced more fees for the Wall Street firms and investment banks. The problem was that the deregulation that started in the 1980's had eliminated the capital requirements of these deal makers to the point that all the risk was passed onto unwitting retail customers and eventually the American taxpayer. It's time to go back to the days when commercial banks were prohibited from using depositors money in non-insured investment bank activities. And its time to call a credit default swap what it actually is... insurance! Then companies like AIG would have to show regulators that they have the capital to pay off on the policies they write like every other traditional insurance company and not rely on the taxpayer to bail them out of a bad investment or bad underwriting decision.

3)  Long-term spending cuts with short term stimulus. There is no doubt we have to tackle spending. But we have to be careful not to repeat the problems that austerity measures have caused in Europe and Greece. Massive cuts in government spending have caused triple-dip recessions in Europe. We would be wise not to repeat that mistake. The problem with the economy today is not caused by the increase in our national debt. A great deal of the increase in the national debt is caused by the bad economy. The national debt is best solved by first getting the economy going with jobs and infrastructure spending. The problem with the last stimulus package is that half of it was tax cuts. History has shown that tax cuts don't stimulate the economy unless they are massive cuts from extremely high tax rates. When Reagan cut taxes they did have a short term stimulus effect. But that was because the upper tax rates were close to 90%. But with upper rates capped at just under 40% and tax deductions bringing the effective rates to around 15% there isn't much room for further cuts to add to the economy. But we do have plenty of infrastructure projects around the country that could boost job growth and add to the productivity of the countries various businesses. With job growth comes increased revenue from an increase in taxpayers. As jobs return we then have more room for additional spending cuts. But we have to be disciplined enough to cut spending when times are good, not bad.

There are plenty more things we could do to improve the economy, but LMR would have to purchase more server space for me to continue. Manufacturing incentives, Off-shore shelter reform, Work requirements for long term entitlements, means testing for Social Security, job creation through targeted tax incentives, Immigration reform, Medicare provider reform, health insurance reform, and a lot of other common-sense spending cuts including the Dept. of Defense.

But none of it will work until the people start to become honest with themselves and realize that the media-driven "us vs. them" attitudes are doing us no good.

JMO... I could be wrong. And realizing that we could be wrong about anything is a good start to opening our minds to others ideas.

So Mike, are you sorry you asked? lol

Dave C

My solution to the problem is stop feeding the world, stop giving away our money and rebuilding other countries, pull our men and women out the sand desert, and protect our boarders, then start rebuilding our roads, bridges, railways, and water ways, that would put a lot of good people of all races and talents to work, and make sure the contractors are american companies, not foreign ones.  You want to see growth, and people off the entitlement government roles, I feel this would be one of the biggest steps that could save our country, not in a year or 2 but it would take at least 5-10 yers, but it could be done if everyone worked together.  But no our elected officials are more worried about getting gun control done up and punish the honest law bidding citizen...JMOO..

dscEvents wrote on 02/13/13 at 7:04pm:


not sorry at all. great ideas. all of them.

however, it must double and possibly triple dip in order to get those in power to get on board. a "RESET" of sorts, that will prove to be UGLY for EVERYONE, whether you are at the top,bottom or in the middle due to all of the debt.


more debt = "kicking the can down the road further"

cut spending = "accepting the pain for our transgressions now for the future"


good ole father time will tell.

thanks for the time dsc.

This actually makes perfect sense and illustrates what I was saying before. As wages at the lower end remain flat or decline the collective buying power of consumers declines and sales volume of large corporations suffer. This is more evidence that the economy isn't driven by the top 5% as the GOP would like you to believe, but is much more dependent on the spending of the bottom 95%. As the incomes of the bottom 95% get squeezed a big part of the economy goes with it.

The payroll tax increase is actually an expiration of a temporary payroll tax cut that went into effect a couple of years ago to put more money into the hands of the people who actually drive the economy. The GOP blocked any extension of these cuts of the payroll tax because they only believe in cuts to corporate taxes, income taxes, and capital gains taxes.

Trickle down failure. Time to rethink 30 years of following it.

jobs and less people dependent on gov't handouts is the only solution....when there isnt enough tax revenue available to pay our bills, which is where we are now, you are in deep dodo.

with 70% of the economy consumer spending i dont think anyone ever said the rich drive the economy.....but they will/do drive the hiring of the public whose spending makes up the 70% unless the govt takes over their specific industries and then you have more govt jobs..... the cycle needs to "reset" and it will dave...i am willing to bet a bowl of crab bisque on it too...lol