[rangerone314]

#1) We need protectionism. (Fair trade is better than "free" trade)
#2) We need for corporations to pay at least the share of taxes they paid in the 1950's.
#3) We need to renovate the railways.
#4) We need mass transit.
#5) We need thorium-based nuclear.
#6) We need to toss a few people under the bus... both the old and the sick people if necessary, since cutting defense to 0 and earmarks to 0 would be useless next to slashing entitlements of medicaire, medicaide & social security.
#7) We need for retirement to go away as a concept. (an aberration of an experiment that will soon fail)
#8) We need to eliminate corporate personhood--it is a product of judicial activism, and is not in the Constitution.
#9) We need to go back to more logical ratios of executive to worker pay (which now from between 200&300 to 1 used to be about 50 to 1).
#10) We need to eradicate financial "innovation". Calling what Wall Street does "innovation" is like spiking a woman's drink with Rohypnol and calling it "dating innovation".

I could go on, but what's the point. These ideas make sense, which makes it beyond Congress to do any of these.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', ' ')We are so FUBAR.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', '#')7) We need for retirement to go away as a concept. (an aberration of an experiment that will soon fail)

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '
')But everything will be fine ... the US needs more burger-flippers and other part-time service jobs ....

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('nobodypanic', '
')yet, i can assure you that there are millions of people that are seriously hurting. just because you have a job and make enough money to scoff at the difference between 2 or 3 dollar gas doesn't mean jack - for some people that's the difference between eating, paying rent, and bankruptcy.

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', ' ')We are so FUBAR.

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', 'B')ut one based on oil supplies just doesn't seem to have much gas...if you can forgive the pun.

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '
')But everything will be fine ... the US needs more burger-flippers and other part-time service jobs ....

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '
')But everything will be fine ... the US needs more burger-flippers and other part-time service jobs ....

[Daniel_Plainview]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '
')But everything will be fine ... the US needs more burger-flippers and other part-time service jobs ....

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '
')Pretending that the future of America rests on turning our citizens back into overpaid and minimally efficient union workers does not strike me as a solution Daniel.

[rangerone314]

China has universities that crank out scientists and engineers that are as good as ours or better, and in far greater numbers.

I have this first hand from an American professor who has married a Chinese woman.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Daniel_Plainview', '
')
I'd prefer a more balanced approach, whereupon the US would simultaneously: (1) achieve a "level playing field" viz. Asia with respect to legal regulation; (2) maximize its predominance of intellectual property (i.e., "cranking out more engineers, scientists, biotech specialists"); and (3) shift from a services-oriented economy to a manufacturing-oriented economy.

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', 'C')hina has universities that crank out scientists and engineers that are as good as ours or better, and in far greater numbers.

I have this first hand from an American professor who has married a Chinese woman.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', 'C')hina has universities that crank out scientists and engineers that are as good as ours or better, and in far greater numbers.

I have this first hand from an American professor who has married a Chinese woman.

[SeaGypsy]

3rd worldhood is not nearly as bad as people who have never lived in it think.

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Xenophobe', '
')Innovation is tough to teach in school. Americans seem to have not only random chunks of it laying around, and use it.

[SeaGypsy]

I think meeting in the middle is more likely than China leapfrogging the US. US standards of living can fall a long way before meeting China's. The US has suffered calamity before and come out stronger for it. The pill will not be easy to swallow and it will either kill or heal the patient.

[Xenophobe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', 'I') think meeting in the middle is more likely than China leapfrogging the US. US standards of living can fall a long way before meeting China's. The US has suffered calamity before and come out stronger for it. The pill will not be easy to swallow and it will either kill or heal the patient.

[SeaGypsy]

Just to put some perspective on this. Some people seem to have an idea that the middle class in China paralells consumption of the middle class in the USA. (1 year old figures):

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he per-capita disposable income of urban people was 17,175 yuan ($2,514.6) in 2009, up 8.8 percent from a year earlier, said Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

Per-capita disposable income of rural residents stood at 5,153 yuan last year, and the growth rate was 0.6 percentage points lower than that of urban residents.