quote:The poor can't afford as much as they could before? No, that's not the problem. The poor - along with the middle and upper classes - are just buying a lot more stuff than they actually need. And we're importing way too much cheap, useless crap that people don't need.
Televisions, computers and washing machines are built to last a few years. There are simply too many fluffy pillows and plastic gadgets (that we all somehow did without 20+ years ago) on the shelves at big box mart.
How much more of this useless stuff do you think our landfills can take?
Seeweed was answering questions on how to solve unemployment, and I was disagreeing with Seeweed's solutions. "Buying too much" did not cause the unemployment problem and buying less won't solve it. Also, over crowded landfills did not cause unemployment, so less stuff in the landfill won't fix that problem either.
quote:Also, because Europe is experiencing a worse fiscal crisis than the U.S., China will continue to buy our bad debt; the dollar is still a safer bet than the euro.
Debt is not good but as long as we're China's best customer they will not try to bankrupt us. If the U.S. economy collapses, so does China's.
That's not what I was talking about. I don't think our currency is headed the way of Zimbabwe's, but it's definitely losing value. Additional debt will only further that decline. That happenes independent of how other currencies perform. This type of currency decline is naturally going to affect those who's only real assets are cash and cash equivalents - the poor and middle class.