The value of a buck

[Chevette Girl]

Speaking of doomsday scenarios... if something truly bad were to go down, how long do you think all those city people are going to have food? I read a statistic somewhere on the internet (grain of salt: added) that stated without the fuel trucks moving petrol from here to there, in the US we'd be out of gas in five days.

For what it's worth, I'm still stuck in suburban hell, for now.

Self-sufficient hobby farm would be my dream (although I don't think my hubby shares it! ) but currently my survival plans are a little more short-term. I vowed after the 1998 ice storm and then spending the big summer blackout ten years ago in an appartment with no way to do ANYTHING that I would never again live in a place where I couldn't at least make a fire to cook over... still can't have a bbq in my condo hell (not enough room on the balcony to get it 10' from the door to be province-legal) but I do have a fireplace and a grilling cage and some cast iron pans that have seen fires before, and we always have a couple days' worth of wood in the garage, enough to hold us over till we can get to one of our parents' places... we could probably last a week or two on what's in the freezer (assuming it doesn't all spoil) and another week on what's in the pantry.

My $$ asssets are mostly tied up in large, stable companies like Tim Hortons and Canadian banks that pay monthly dividends, I figure if they go belly-up, my money was gonna be worthless anyway and my sock drawer doesn't pay dividends ;D

 

[bernardsmith]

Certainly not a doomsday scenario. It's an abundance of caution. If you assume that the dollar is losing value (which we all know, it is), you must assume that at some point that dollar won't be able to pay for everything you need. For instance, if you're living on a fixed income of some sort; if the value of a dollar dramatically changes, you might not have enough money to make ends meet anymore. Better to not be wholly dependent on your bank account to make it by in life.

Speaking of doomsday scenarios... if something truly bad were to go down, how long do you think all those city people are going to have food? I read a statistic somewhere on the internet (grain of salt: added) that stated without the fuel trucks moving petrol from here to there, in the US we'd be out of gas in five days.

For what it's worth, I'm still stuck in suburban hell, for now.

But you beg the question: You state that categorically we all "know" that the dollar is losing value. I honestly have no sense that that is true. What is the basis for your claim that the dollar has lost value? Are you simply saying that if the PRICE of goods has risen in 100 years then the COST of those goods has risen? I don't think that a single economist in the planet would agree that price and cost are the same thing. The cost of most goods has dramatically fallen and continues to fall. The number of $$$ that people use to pay for those goods has risen and may continue to rise, And so have their incomes although since The conservatives and neo-liberals have been in power income of the richest (the 1 percent) has risen staggeringly and the income of most others has more or less stagnated. But that is not about the value of the dollar.

If - like Ron Paul you want to claim that we should return to the Gold Standard ( though the only basis for gold being a measuring stick for value in the past was because the people who had gold also held power. There is nothing magical about gold being a unit of measure any more than a thumb was the unit of measure in the middle ages) and if the amount of $$ bills you could produce depended not on the amount of manufactured goods and services you produced and sold but the amount of gold you mined and had in a vault, then you could be gold poor but goods rich and yet would be unable to pay the population enough to survive in your country.

So I ask again: by what measure are you saying that the value of a dollar has unquestionably fallen? and what does that expression in fact mean? For the entire planet the US dollar is the current "gold standard", not the pound sterling , not the Chinese yuan, not the deutchmark nor the franc and thank god , not the pounds of gold locked away in bank vaults -

 

[ken_schramm]

Pretty heady stuff here. I hear from my Canadian friends that they hate their "socialized health system" right up the point where you say you want to take it away, and then watch your fingers. We'll get to single payer eventually, after the people without the money figure out that the people with the money were the ones telling them they didn't want it. Churchill may not have been the one to say it, but America can always be counted on to do the right thing, after all other possibilities have been exhausted.

And the working proletariat may control the means of production, but the working farmer controls lunch. Let's keep these people viable, please. Happy would be good, too.

 

[ken_schramm]

The company that makes all those iProducts is ditching even the underpaid, overworked employees they've got in favor of assembly line robots. How long till it hits here?

Joe

I'm in Detroit. It should hit here right about... 25 years ago.

 

[Riverat]

worth of $1.00 from 1913 is:

$23.90 using the Consumer Price Index
$17.20 using the GDP deflator
$45.40 using the value of consumer bundle
$99.40 using the unskilled wage
$138.00 using the Production Worker Compensation
$127.00 using the nominal GDP per capita
$411.00 using the relative share of GDP


Seems to depend on what you are measuring against (when all else fails, manipulate the data!)

 

[Chevette Girl]

I hear from my Canadian friends that they hate their "socialized health system" right up the point where you say you want to take it away, and then watch your fingers. We'll get to single payer eventually, after the people without the money figure out that the people with the money were the ones telling them they didn't want it.

Now that's an astute observation

Most of us (in my experience) don't hate our system. We recognize that it does have its problems (I still don't have a family doctor and end up using walk-in clinics, for example), but at least I know I will never have to weigh the cost of an ER trip against my health, and my friend with cancer isn't going to be left to die because he's not a millionaire or has a gold-plated health plan.

And the working proletariat may control the means of production, but the working farmer controls lunch. Let's keep these people viable, please. Happy would be good, too.

All around this area you see bumper stickers and signs, "Farmers feed cities!" and yet farmland is disappearing at an alarming rate, having been paved over for more frigging suburbs...

 

[TheAlchemist]

Head for the hills?
I would seriously consider some sort of barter system.

Joe

I have long been an advocate of a gifting based economy...a barter is taxable, but a "gift" (up to a certain point) is not...

 

[TheAlchemist]

As a medical sociologist I agree with you. I cannot for the life of me fathom why "we the people" did not demand and do not demand a single payer system . You call it a social health program. I call it a national health program and it could be paid for through taxation so those who earn more pay more and those who earn less pay less and those who don't earn (the retired, the ailing, the unemployed) don't pay and the risk pool is 300,000,000 people and the costs plummet because no health care practice needs to keep track of thousands of forms and options. AND if people want to have private insurance for more than good basic health care they can.

... But as a medical sociologist I can tell you that the health of the US citizen is NOT the best in the world, the infant mortality rates are NOT the lowest on the planet (far from it) , our longevity is NOT the longest on the planet, but we pay through the nose to be have high mortality and poor prognoses and a shorter life span than people in many other industrialized and even non industrialized countries...

Kiwis and Aussies have evidence based cost effective medicine for all...if you want something "more" than evidence based cost effective medicine, you can also have private insurance, or pay privately...

Nations with Single Payer systems pay about 9percent of their GDP to cover about 100percent of the people. We (currently) pay about 16percent of our GDP to cover about 85percent of the people... we suffer from paying a HUGE amount of "overhead" to pay top execs, while Medicare invests only about 2percent of its budget in overhead...oh, don't get me started...pnhp.org

 

[TheAlchemist]

...the outsourcing problem (the other issue screwing us over...I get steamed when I see a "patriotic" General Electric PR advertisement...if corporations are citizens this one is a traitor) like an invasive species...

As with last year, I am making an effort to reflect these values in my Christmas shopping and have been begging family members to offer options on their "wish lists" that include American made gifts purchased from small businesses owned by individuals whose hand they can shake...

 

[TheAlchemist]

There's only one way to deal with those companies: Hit 'em where it hurts. A 100% value tax on products outsourced by American companies. Oh, and they can kiss their subsidies goodbye too.

No need for a tax, or legislation.
Hitting them where it hurts means being an informed consumer and paying for American made products instead.

(incidentally, Thank You Ken Schramm for making a point of purchasing Made In USA t-shirts for your shop!)

As for subsidies...we can't afford them...

 

[antonioh]

Well...

From this side of the Atlantic , we have social security, payed unemployement and national health service , this one initialy free but as the expenses raise , now we are beginning to pay what they call moderating taxes, that in emergency services can rise up to 50 euro. But despite the critics we make to our health service, we have the lowest infant mortality rate in EC and the life span continues to grow ..

I think we only recognize the good thing we have, the day we will lose it. And that day will came sooner than we think.
Two banks went bankruptcy and the government used money from our taxes to hold those banks. The result - to pay for the banks, they take out from health and socilal security.

Globalisation brought big asymmetries. I am not so sure that yuan won´t be the next "Gold standard"...

 

[TheAlchemist]

Self-sufficient hobby farm would be my dream (although I don't think my hubby shares it! )... ;D

You're in good company here...

 

[TheAlchemist]

All other species on Earth live within a "local economy." If a species can't get itself to the resources it needs using only ATP/photosynthesis as its energy source, that species doesn't survive...

Our capacity to use energy sources other than ATP makes living in a global economy possible, and makes us the most "invasive" species on Earth...</soapbox>

 

[Chevette Girl]

Hitting them where it hurts means being an informed consumer and paying for American made products instead.

That ends up being a vicious circle. I'm pretty good at buying local produce (I consider the "bargain shelf" about-to-go-bad stuff to be fair game otherwise I'd never see a citrus fruit), but I cannot afford American (nevermind Canadian)-made clothing most of the time because it's at least two or three times the price. In fact I can't remember the last piece of clothing I saw anywhere that wasn't most likely made in a sweat shop. I could sew my own clothes, but even for something so simple as a $5 t-shirt, I'd pay at least three times more just to buy the fabric... And when was the last time you saw ANY kind of electronic device made on this continent?

 

[bernardsmith]

Now that's an astute observation







All around this area you see bumper stickers and signs, "Farmers feed cities!" and yet farmland is disappearing at an alarming rate, having been paved over for more frigging suburbs...

I have no idea whether the "farmer" feeds the city or Big Farmer Inc feeds the city but I suspect that a great deal of arable farm land is now growing corn to fuel cars and as fodder for animals. I believe in the sanctity of manual labor but we need to adopt rather more accurate understandings of the nature of the society in which we we live than bumper sticker slogans promote. Oxfam suggests that 40 percent of the corn grown by "the US farmer" is used for ethanol rather than to feed the hungry.
http://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/2012/10/04/corn-as-fuel-not-food/

and if Big Farm Inc cannot make use of the farmer's land then it's "the farmer" who sells his /her land to developers of urban sprawl.

 

[TheAlchemist]

The iShop is rumored to be considering making their products in the US...

 

[joemirando]

worth of $1.00 from 1913 is:

$23.90 using the Consumer Price Index
$17.20 using the GDP deflator
$45.40 using the value of consumer bundle
$99.40 using the unskilled wage
$138.00 using the Production Worker Compensation
$127.00 using the nominal GDP per capita
$411.00 using the relative share of GDP


Seems to depend on what you are measuring against (when all else fails, manipulate the data!)

Heh heh, I think it was Mark Twain who said:
"Numbers don't lie,
statistics do."

 

[psychopomp23]

And when was the last time you saw ANY kind of electronic device made on this continent?

Maybe not electronic devices but i'm a big supporter of Godin guitars which are all made here in the province of Québec and they're actualy cheaper here than if you would buy them in the US or Europe. But i do agree with your point it's hard to find a local 'gem' that gets you the bang for you bucks

 

[bernardsmith]

electronic devices made in the USA ?

I dunno, I used to work for a company that made stealth transformers (no detectable electronic or audible noise) for use in submarines by the US navy. They and all the electronics that went into them were made right here. You wouldn't see them because they were not sold in Walmart and the company doesn't advertise on TV or on the internet... I am now with the State U of NY but last I heard that company still makes these transformers along with many other very sophisticated electronic devices not sold in stores.

 

[Chevette Girl]

That's fine and all for military applications because they usually come with nice fat contracts, and if I ran the military I probably wouldn't want to use foreign components in my equipment either. But us poor schleps? Good luck.