America's Broken Economy

IMHO, the primary basis of the Sharia Law on finance is not to take advantage of the debtor - a kind of loan shark where if the debtor could not pay, do not beat up and take out the person's livelihood. That is a civilized thing to do. Unfortunately, No Muslim country obeys this with perhaps the exception of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

There is a place for both parties to learn from each other. The Middle Eastern Nations should learn our method of doing business where we focus on productivity and efficient utilization of human resources including use of females which are 50% of that human resources. We in turn should learn not to have Payday Loans and other activities such as too many layers of profiteering that increases the retail cost of products and services which creates a less efficient society.

Then we can have a better world which will benefit them a lot more than us.

I don't think we need to stop importing stuff Biguru--it's just that it's important that foreign products get revenue tariffed 10-20%, with the tax revenue used to reduce taxation on products manufactured domestically. That would cause a huge swing in products manufactured here, while at the same time relegating imports to their traditional purpose, that of funding the federal government. A revenue tariff is really just a necessary sin tax, like we already have on booze and cigarettes.

Free traders and trade protectionists both believe that the federal government should generate no revenue from foreign-made products, the former because that would mean the tariff rate is nonzero, the latter because it meant someone bought a foreign product. But there is a middle ground that keeps a much healthier balance of trade while nicely fattening up government coffers.

The US government buys more paper and cranks up the presses to print more dollars, T-Bills, Government Bonds and other security instruments to pay for the US balance of trade deficit, government payrolls, bailouts, entitlements, pork barrels, operations, social schemes, wars, infrastructure, wealth re-distribution, and etc. Why should any of us want to work to make any of the things that we consume, as long as we can just print money to pay foreign manufacturers for the things that we consume, and also to pay for the government activities that we want performed. Instead of the US government redeeming these freshly printed dollars and securities with our gold reserves (which are in short supply or maybe non-existent), the US government encourages these foreign governments and foreign individuals to buy US real estate, industries, breweries, hotels, remaining factories, casinos, raw land, forests, agro-businesses, and financial institutions with the foreigners decreasing value bonds and dollars that we gave to them to pay for the things that we imported and consumed (rather than us working to manufacture these things). The USA Government is supporting this selling of America to foreign entities by calling it "Investing in America". Without selling these assets to redeem dollars, the exchange rate or buying power of our dollars would be much worse. Our Children will probably become employees of the foreign countries and foreign individuals that will eventually own everything of value in the USA.

Only a foreign trade surplus will increase our gold reserves and protect the purchasing value of our currency. Without correcting our balance of trade, big dollars for new construction of infrastructure will not stop the declining buying power of the Dollar. The more money that we print, the less buying power each dollar will have. We need to re-industrialize and manufacture the things that we consume, rather than send our dollars overseas to pay people in foreign countries to manufacture the things that we consume, while we do other things to occupy our time.

We have already destroyed most of our industrial manufacturing base, so what are we going to do when the manufacturing nations stop taking our dollars (and junk bonds) for the things that we consume?

This country needs people educated in science, medicine, mathematics, and engineering if this country is ever going to re-industrialize rather than print money and sell our future to support ourselves today. We cannot afford to support any more artists, actors, musicians, philosophers, historians, poets, novelists, political scientists, liberal arts majors, etc. Only about 5% of the college students in the USA are studying science, mathematics or engineering, as compared to Asian Countries where the majority of the college students are majoring in science, medicine, mathematics or engineering. We are acting real dumb.

It is not the foreigner's fault that this condition exists. We created this condition ourselves. We have destroyed most of our industries and fired all of the employees that were located in the US. Our Stupid Legislators, Ignorant Government Employees, Bad Corporate Managers, Greedy Unions, Wall Street Financial Geniuses, Enron and Arthur Anderson type Master Criminals, NAFTA, EPA, and OSHA, just to name a few, have created this situation.

I could go on forever, buy we have met the enemy, and it is ourselves.