. July 4, 2008 SouthAmerica: Americans have been selling to the world for a long time the idea of how flexible, agile, and efficient the US economic system is compared to everybody else. It is interesting that Americans consider their economic system to be very efficient and a system that is supposed to adjust and to adapt itself to new circumstances by being flexible and agile. Can you imagine the kind of trouble the United States would be in today if the United States were not so flexible and agile in the last 30 years on their effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil? Maybe what helped the United States to move so fast to fix its energy problem on the last 30 years it is because the energy area is a matter of national security. And Americans did place energy on the top of its list of problems to be fixed since the energy area it is of fundamental importance on the process of keeping a stable economy in the United States. Now quoting from the enclose article: âIn 1973, when OPEC imposed its oil embargo, U.S. oil imports composed 30 percent of our needs; today, they make up more than 60 percent, with a growing proportion of that crude coming from the world's least stable regions. At around $145 a barrel, the United States, by my calculations, will spend more on imported oil this year than it will spend on its own defense budget, and much of that money will flow into the coffers of those who wish us ill.â The article started by saying: âWhen the founding fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries.â The United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries regarding its oil needs, and cash from foreign sources to keep the US economy afloat. In one of the postings on this forum someone mentioned that GM stock went from $ 43 per share to about $ 10 per share. I am sorry to learn that fact. GM stock should go to $ 1 per share or even lower because of the quality of its management â they really deserve to go out of business. As the article mentioned: âThe kind of electric cars deployed in Israel have never returned to U.S. showrooms since General Motors' mass crushing of its EV1 -- the subject of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"â If you had the chance to see that documentary then you would agree with me that GM should go out of business and be replaced by a company with vision of the future. Talking about American efficiency again â Why General Motors killed the EV1 electric car? Because GM network of dealers told GM management that they would not be able to survive if GM started selling too many EV1âs because these cars needed almost no maintenance and that would reduce the dealers profit margin and business by over 30 percent. Anyway who want to buy a car that requires very little maintenance? I bet most Americans would miss having to send their cars for a tune up, and for oil changes, and other expensive repairs on a regular basis. GM had a partnership with the company that made the batteries for the EV1âs â in the beginning the people were able to drive only 75 miles between charges, and it did take time to recharge these batteries. When the batteries were improved and the new batteries allowed people to drive 300 miles â GM sold its controlling share of the battery company to Texaco and Chevron - and Texaco and Chevron closed the company that was making this new battery that allowed people to drive 300 miles between battery charges. Last year a company from Texas displayed to the public its new type of battery â they donât use the name battery they call the new device capacitors or something like that â anyway this new type of battery have a range of 500 miles between charges and the beauty of the new system is that it takes only 5 minutes to recharge this new battery and the person can drive another 500 miles. Only fools believe on the market efficiency theory â just look at Wall Streetâ¦.. Only fools also believe on the efficiency of the American economy â and we can start with GM case study and go from theirâ¦. ******** âIran and Brazil Can Do It. So Can We.â By Gal Luft The Washington Post Sunday, July 6, 2008; Page B01 When the founding fathers declared our independence, they could not have imagined that, 232 years later, the United States would be so spectacularly dependent on foreign countries. It would be roughly eight more decades before oil gushed from a well in Titusville, Pa., marking the beginning of the global oil economy; it took eight decades more for the United States to become a net oil importer. But the republic's disastrous dependence on foreign oil has increased by leaps and bounds ever since. In 1973, when OPEC imposed its oil embargo, U.S. oil imports composed 30 percent of our needs; today, they make up more than 60 percent, with a growing proportion of that crude coming from the world's least stable regions. At around $145 a barrel, the United States, by my calculations, will spend more on imported oil this year than it will spend on its own defense budget, and much of that money will flow into the coffers of those who wish us ill. Since oil dependence is so unappealing, you'd think that energy independence would be an easy sell, especially on this Fourth of July weekend. But in fact, very few policy ideas have been so ridiculed. A 2007 report by the National Petroleum Council, a privately funded group that offers advice from the oil and gas industries to the federal government, calls energy independence "unrealistic"; a recent book, "Gusher of Lies," by Robert Bryce, a former fellow at a think tank funded in part by energy interests, described energy independence as a "dangerous delusion"; and a 2006 Council on Foreign Relations task force went so far as to accuse those promoting energy independence of "doing the nation a disservice by focusing on a goal that is unachievable over the foreseeable future." Ignore them. Energy independence does not mean that the United States must be entirely self-sufficient. It simply means reducing the role of oil in world politics -- turning it from a strategic commodity into merely another thing to sell. Is energy independence a pipe dream? Hardly. In the electricity sector, the mission has already been accomplished. Remember President Jimmy Carter in his cardigan during the oil crises of the 1970s, urging Americans to save electricity? It took us just one decade to wean the electricity sector from oil. Today, only 2 percent of U.S. electricity comes from oil, according to the Energy Department. Could we do something similar with transportation, where American cars and trucks still gulp oil-based fuel greedily? At least four very different countries -- dictatorships and democracies alike -- are already making serious headway toward that goal. It's past time to pay attention to their example. The first country, surprisingly enough, is Iran. The Islamic republic has lots of crude but little capacity to refine it, leaving Tehran heavily dependent on gasoline imports. The country's blustery president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is fully aware that this is Iran's Achilles' heel and worries that a comprehensive gasoline embargo could cause enough social unrest to undermine his regime. Article will continue below. .
. Above article second part: So Ahmadinejad has launched an energy-independence program designed to shift Iran's transportation system from gasoline to natural gas, which Iran has plenty of. "If we can change our automobiles' fuel from gasoline to [natural] gas during the next three-four years," he said last July, "we won't need gasoline anymore." His plan includes a mandate for domestic automakers to make "dual-fuel" cars that can run on both gasoline and natural gas, a crash program to convert used vehicles to run on natural gas and a program to convert Iranian gas stations to serve both kinds of fuel. According to the International Association of Natural Gas Vehicles, more than 100 conversion centers have been built throughout the country: Iranians can drive in with their gasoline-only cars, pay a subsidized fee equivalent to $50 and collect their newly dual-fuelled cars several hours later. Ahmadinejad's plan, which has been largely ignored by the West, means that within five years or so, Iran could be virtually immune to international sanctions. While Iran is moving quickly toward energy independence, Brazil is already there. It's a striking turnaround; three decades ago, the country imported 80 percent of its oil supply. But since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the Brazilians have invested massively in their sugar-based ethanol industry and created a fleet of vehicles that can run on the resulting fuel. According to the Sugar Cane Industry Union (Unica), 90 percent of the new cars sold this year in Brazil will be flexible-fuel vehicles that cost an extra $100 to make but can run on any combination of gasoline and ethanol. Lest anyone think that can't be done in the United States, many of those new cars are made by General Motors and Ford. All it really takes to turn a regular car into a flex-fuel one is a fuel sensor and a corrosion-resistant fuel line. Discovering how to make hydrocarbons and carbohydrates happily cohabit in the same fuel tank isn't all that Brazil has done; it has also increased domestic oil production. Its efforts have not only broken the yoke of Brazil's oil dependence but also insulated the country's economy from the pain of the current spike in global oil prices. Gasoline prices have nearly doubled elsewhere since 2005, but in Brazil, they have been almost frozen. This year, more ethanol will be sold in Brazil than gasoline. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Like Brazil, China has decided to replace gasoline with alternative fuels. But unlike the United States and Brazil, where the favorite substitute is ethanol, China has embraced a different alcohol: methanol. Several provinces in China already blend their gasoline with methanol, a clear, colorless liquid also known as wood alcohol, and scores of methanol plants are currently under construction there. The Chinese auto industry has already begun to produce flex-fuel models that can run on methanol. Shanxi, a province in central China that produces much of the country's coal, has even issued stickers granting cars that use pure methanol free passage on the province's toll roads. The distinction between methanol and ethanol is just one letter (but then, so is the difference between Iran and Iraq). Both biofuels should be in our basket of options. True, ethanol packs more energy per gallon and is less corrosive than methanol. But methanol is cheaper and far easier to produce in bulk. While ethanol can be made only from agricultural products such as corn and sugar cane, methanol can be made from natural gas, coal, industrial garbage and even recycled carbon dioxide captured from power stations' smokestacks -- an elegant way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Israel offers a fourth testament to what leadership, ingenuity and audacity can achieve. Last year, it launched an electric-car venture designed to turn Israel -- which obviously has some tensions with the region's big oil producers -- into an oil-free economy. Israelis will soon be able to replace their gasoline-fueled cars with battery-operated ones, which they'll plug into the hundreds of thousands of recharging points planned to be erected throughout the country. Israeli motorists, the government hopes, will be able to swap their batteries in a matter of minutes at dedicated stations or recharge them at home or at work. "Oil is the greatest problem of all time -- the great polluter and promoter of terror," said Israeli President Shimon Peres, the project's political patron. "We should get rid of it." For each of the four countries, knocking oil off its pedestal is no longer a theoretical proposition but a reality in the making. But despite the lip service our own politicians pay to the need to reduce our oil dependence, none of the solutions offered by Iran, Brazil, China and Israel are even under consideration in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Just go down the list. Natural-gas vehicles are nowhere to be seen. Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is barred from the country by a steep 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff, courtesy of ethanol protectionists and their representatives in Congress. (No tariff is imposed on imported oil, of course.) For similar reasons, flex-fuel cars sold in the United States are certified to run only on ethanol, keeping methanol and other viable biofuels off the market -- even though they are cheaper and can be made from a wealth of coal and biomass resources. The kind of electric cars deployed in Israel have never returned to U.S. showrooms since General Motors' mass crushing of its EV1 -- the subject of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" It's time to get serious. Policies such as "drill more" and "drive smaller cars" all keep us running on petroleum. At best, they buy us a few more years of complacency, while ensuring a much worse dependence down the road when America's conventional oil reserves are even more depleted -- whether or not we drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The hard truth is that real energy independence can be achieved only through fuel choice and competition. That competition cannot take place as long as (according to the Department of Transportation) we continue to put 16 million new cars that run only on petroleum on our roads every year, each with an average street life of 16.8 years -- thereby locking ourselves into decades more of petroleum dependence. So let's remember the old saying: When in a hole, stop digging. If every new car sold in the United States were a flex-fuel vehicle and if millions of Americans could plug in their electric cars, gasoline would be facing fierce competition at the pump and the socket. Moreover, our money would have migrated from Exxon to Pepco, from the Middle East to the Midwest -- as well as to scores of poor, biomass-producing countries in Africa, Latin America and South Asia, including the few countries that don't yet hate our guts. This, and no other, is the road to independence. Gal Luft is executive director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and co-founder of the Set America Free Coalition, a bipartisan alliance of groups promoting U.S. energy independence. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070303250.html .
Excellent, Excellent, Excellent Commentary AS USUAL ........................................................................................... First off, the commentary about the illusion of efficiency is very telling . Just how can it be that a nation is efficient when it can no longer use its own labor for production, to the extent that production of all kinds has to leave the country? The manufacturing left the borders because of the lack of efficiency, because costs are the most important part of efficiency. The US system was efficient at financial engineering but not mechanical engineering. However is rapidly learning the hard way that temporay financial engineering causes financial calamity when left unchecked in an increasingly inefficient system. This cannot be any clearer, the US having to farm out labor is because of inefficiency at home. How do supposed economists miss this major point ? ........................................................................................ Energy planning and leadership Just how is it that a smart country can get caught with an abrupt about face in energy costs such as now is happening, to the degree that it is transferring its wealth to other nations at the speed of light ? What does this say about the leadership ? Why? It is very clear that planning for the future has meant nothing and clearly does not have a place in US policies ? And the US leads the world ? ..................................................................................... Clearly the US is in reactionary mode and not a very good one at that. The leadership does not even have the ability to see the fire to extinquish its flames. And they just sit and watch it burn ? The US needs to revamp its leadership with true intelligence that knows what proper planning is all about. It is quite obvious that there are no people in its legal system that were boy scouts. Their moto is "BE PREPARED". .................................................................................... About Cars and Efficiency It is not only the production of cars that need to be efficient, but the energy delivery system needs to be more efficient. In most countries, they are happy to have transportation that has 4 wheels , a cover, a motor, and a fan. The US legal system and useless add ons make the costs of cars 10 times more than they really should be. Think not ?, then visit the Tata site and look at the Nano for $2500. Production has just started in today's world. Then pause, and think why. The US cannot again ever let the US Oil companies dominate energy requirements for transportation. Energy should not have to come from a gas OR HYDROGEN STATION. Hydrogen can be separated in the cars motor apparatus, only requiring one to add water from home. Electric cars, can plug into any outlet. Why should any country subject itself to the uncertainty of supplies and continue to pay for uneccessary distribution points costs? The solutiion is simple. Get rid of the oil companies as you know them today. Let the Middle East go play in the sand. Maybe they can change their major industry to glass blowing. ............................................................................................. The US has been a great leader in the past, is it now ?
Interesting discussion for a 4th of July. Yes, the U.S. seems to be looking a bit tattered these days. A lot are saying that our best days are behind us, some think deservedly so. But, when I think about our history as a nation, as relatively young as it is compared to others, a few things strike me as being unique and leave hope that we'll get over these rough patches and come out better than before. Let's start with 1812. The US was about one generation old at the time. Our president, Madison, was pretty fed up with the way England was behaving, so he requested to Congress that the U.S. declare war against them. Well, he got what he wanted and England got a chance for payback over the Revolutionary War. In the beginning we were certainly getting our asses handed to us. Not sure how many know this, but the English army cut through our militia like a hot knife through warm butter into Washington D.C. and burned the White House and pretty much the rest of the city to the ground. Well, we know how that war turned out in the end, once we got our asses in gear and organized, right? As bad as things are now, think about the Civil War. I can't think of anything worse than when a nation is on the verge of killing itself and many of its citizens. Well, unless I'm mistaken, I do believe the U.S. is only nation in recorded history to have survived a civil war with it's borders unchanged afterwards. What a lot of people also don't realize was that the civil war was also the nation's most deadliest with over 620,000 dead. For me, the most stirring symbol regarding that era was that these same men who were ready to kill each other sent their sons off to foreign soil little more than a generation later. This time, fighting together in WWI. Well, the end of that war led to a boom that led to what is still the nation's biggest bust; the Great Depression. What did the U.S. get for bootstrapping itself out of that mess? Another world war, this time on two fronts and over 400,000 killed in action. Looking to the present we're mired in America's longest military conflict; Iraq. Adding to the burden are the spiraling costs of energy, food and practically every other commodity. We're stuck in a housing bust and have wallets filled with dollars that are at historically low valuations. As a nation we're not feeling too good right now. To make matters worse we're thinking how our "leaders" could have not anticipated this mess. To be fair, we're mostly to blame for voting these imbeciles in in the first place. But, I can't help thinking that's it's part and parcel with the way of life in this country, we simply had "better" things to do and didn't mind so much for longer than we should have. In the end, we'll do the right thing. Most likely, in a way that will live up to Churchill's observation that we'll only do it after we've exhausted everything else. Eventually, the self-serving morons that are ruining this country will get tossed out and replaced by those with fresh ideas to turn things around, however painful that transition may be. In closing, today is special. It commemorates a handful of men who on a hot, steamy day in Philadelphia declared our nation's independence. Even more special is the Constitution, and it's first 10 amendments, the Bill of Rights, that were drafted 11 years after the Declaration of Independence. Those documents form the basis of a nation that has survived without radical change to it's founding principles longer than any other in recorded history. IMHO, betting against us would be foolish to say the least. Happy 4th of July, fellow Americans.
Excellent Commentary......................... ....................................................................................... Well said..... And I think that gasoline stations and gas powered cars will soon be antique memories. I want the US to pull it off, so the rest of the world will as well.... The world is waiting.....
. July 5, 2008 SouthAmerica: What GM did to the EV1 electric car is the kind of stupid action that pisses me off. The GM management had no foresight of a changing world and that company deserves to go out of business. I want to make one last comment about GM. In the Lex Column of the Financial Times (UK) of July 3, 2008 the columnist said that the last time GM stock traded in the range around US$ 10 per share was in the 1950âs On July 3, 2008 GM stock was trading again in the range around US$ 10 per share. What the writer did not mention is that the US dollar has lost 90 percent of its value since 1950, and if we adjust for inflation the current US$ 10 per share GM stock, then today GM stock has become a penny stock in terms of its 1950âs value. Here is some info about the US economy in the 1950âs: In 1950 the average cost of new car was $1,510.00 and by 1959 was $2,200.00 In 1950 the average income per year was $3,210.00 and by 1959 was $5,010.00 In 1950 a gallon of gas was 18 cents and by 1959 was 25 cents Here we have some charts about: Inflation vs. GM stock http://rack1.ul.cs.cmu.edu/sinflat/ ******** Libertad: First off, the commentary about the illusion of efficiency is very telling . Just how can it be that a nation is efficient when it can no longer use its own labor for production, to the extent that production of all kinds has to leave the country? The manufacturing left the borders because of the lack of efficiency, because costs are the most important part of efficiency. ⦠The US has been a great leader in the past, is it now ? ******* SouthAmerica: When I read articles on magazines or newspapers saying how the American economy is so efficient or listen to commentators on television talking about how the American economic system is so efficient, agile, and adaptive to new circumstances â comments like that makes me feel like throwing up. I could make a long list of examples showing how inefficient the US economy really is regarding many areas of the economy from healthcare, to communications, to energy, to infrastructure, to defense spending, to space program, and so on⦠In my opinion the US economy looks more and more each day as a collapsing Soviet Union â just give enough time and we will get there. Let me give you a quick example of how inefficient and âDumbâ the American economy has become - In a nutshell: ethanol. Americans have been following for decades what is going on in Brazil regarding the production of ethanol from sugar cane. That means that Americans canât claim ignorance on this subject. Even though Americans were aware all along that you could produce 5 times more ethanol made from sugar cane than from corn from the same type of effort â Americans went ahead and they spent billions of dollars and they created an industry in the US that produces ethanol from corn and they disregarded any future impact that ethanol made from corn would have on the entire food supply of the United States. The idea of American efficiency is a myth and a bunch of bullshit and ethanol is a major example that magnifies American inefficiency to the rest of the world to see it. Why Americans invested billions of dollars in the production of ethanol made from corn even though most people on the industry knew that the only reason they were doing that was to take advantage of government subsidies that had been in place to help grow corn during the Great depression to help feed the American population â and not to grow corn to make fuel for automobiles. If the American system were an efficient system as they claim, then the US government would have passed new legislation to discourage the production of ethanol made from corn a long time ago â since corn production and the price of corn can have a major impact in the entire food production chain in the United States â from milk, to beef and so onâ¦. You asked the following question: âThe US has been a great leader in the past, is it now?â The answer is: No. You are right about the past â the US had some great leaders in the past â from FDR to Bill Clinton. Today we have an idiot in charge in the US, and a pathetic administration that reminds me of the Robert Mugabe government than anything else. The entire world has been watching George W. Bush and his administration since 2001 and today only idiots would follow the leadership of such a Pathetic person. George W. Bush and his administration is the Mugabe of the first world. In the same way that Robert Mugabe has destroyed Zimbabwe in the last 20 years â George W. Bush and his pals have annihilated the foundations of the United States in the last 7 years. ********* Jprad: ⦠a few things strike me as being unique and leave hope that we'll get over these rough patches and come out better than before. Let's start with 1812. ******** SouthAmerica: Around 1812 the US was a very small country that included only the original states and a population of around 7 million people of which only a handful of people were literate. And the total world population was reaching 1 billion people around 1812. ******** Jprad: ⦠What a lot of people also don't realize was that the civil war was also the nation's most deadliest with over 620,000 dead. ⦠Well, the end of that war led to a boom that led to what is still the nation's biggest bust; the Great Depression. ⦠What did the U.S. get for bootstrapping itself out of that mess? Another world war, this time on two fronts and over 400,000 killed in action. ******** SouthAmerica: The 4th of July it is a good time to remind the American people that one of the greatest documents ever created around the world â the âU.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rightsâ â it did survive a civil war, 2 world wars, and a Great Depression. But it did not survive George W. Bush and his highly incompetent administration. The US Patriot Act that they passed after 9/11 it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. ******** Jprad: â¦Adding to the burden are the spiraling costs of energy, food and practically every other commodity. We're stuck in a housing bust and have wallets filled with dollars that are at historically low valuations. â¦. Eventually, the self-serving morons that are ruining this country will get tossed out and replaced by those with fresh ideas to turn things around, however painful that transition may be. ********* SouthAmerica: The problem is that we have run out of time and the mess is going to snowball from this point on. You left out of your comments the most severe problem that is coming at the speed of light and is going to hit the US like a nuclear explosion. In a very short period of time the US population over 65 years old is going to skyrocket from the current 40 million people to about 75 million people and as a nation we are not prepared to handle such a Tsunami. Every year from now on we will have almost 3 million new senior citizens to add on top of the population over 65 years old that the US government is already taking care of. And the American population over 85 years old is going to skyrocket like never before, and this is the population that cost the most regarding healthcare and so onâ¦. On April 2, 1948 Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act that authorized the Marshall Plan. President Truman signed it the next day. In 2009 we will need a new Marshall Plan for the United States. The first Marshall Plan was designed to reconstruct Europe after WW II. The new Marshall Plan should be designed to rebuild the foundations of the US economy after 8 years of a catastrophic Bush administration. ******* Jprad: In closing, today is special. It commemorates a handful of men who on a hot, steamy day in Philadelphia declared our nation's independence. ******* SouthAmerica: The United States was lucky in having such a bunch of great men living at the same time and creating the foundations of the United States â men such as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Ben Franklin, George Washington and a few others. Today we have idiots and Morons such as George W. Bush and Dickhead Cheney. I would be optimistic about the future of the United States if we were electing someone of the caliber of Al Gore to be the next leader of the United States and guide the US through the Perfect Storm that is just ahead. Instead we have nothing to look forward to when the choices in November of 2008 are: John McCain and Barak Obama. The reality is: Today the United States is in big trouble and things are just going to get worse in the coming years. .
exactly where does the US have a competitive advantage or as ricardo would put it where does the US have less inefficiency compared to the rest of the world. http://books.google.com/books?id=dv...a=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA8,M1
the US economy has legacy costs which are sinking the economy. a tipping point seems to be reached perhaps as the result of the X time price increase in oil or perhaps a combination of factors. "Legacy costs is a term formed by analogy with the computer industry's legacy systems. Legacy costs are those incured by an organization in prior years under different leadership or when the entity's priorities and resources were different. In business, while it can refer to other commitments (particularly existing infrastructure) as well, it primarily refers to company obligations to pay heath care costs and pensions under defined-benefit plans for current employees and retirees, usually incurred during the labor peace era after World War II. Legacy costs are widely credited with handicapping American auto manufacturers and older airlines worldwide, diminishing their competitiveness. " there is a disconnect between the interest of management and their public shareholders. when management is in bed with labor as is the case with GM management gets paid extremely well as long as the co. keeps going. outrageous salaries and perks are then given to both management and to hell with the shareholders/owners of the co. again there is a disconnect between management and shareholder when management is richly rewarded for failure to perform. eg merill lynch when the ceo was replaced he left with a $140million severance package. when financial co's executives become richer than midas by levering their co.'s 30:1 and are unpunished when the tide turns the US loses its competiveness. non financial co's add to their debt load. no matter what happens management gets paid either through excessive salaries or stock options as long the co.survives. at some pt. the game stops. as these kind of shenanigans become too much common place in the US, the US loses more of its competitive advantages. by delaying the cleansing process through govt bailouts a bad situation can only take a longer time to reverse itself.
Excellent Excellent Commentary....... As Usual ................................................................................................ ZDREG mentions legacy costs carry overs which diminish competition which are prevalent in the form of legal largesse and what I call chips in the political process, which never ends. Both legal largesse and political chips are the main culprits of economic idiocy in that they are like a rancid continual cancer to economic efficiency. Examples ? Oil companies and the Bush/Cheney Oil Administration did not start with Bush Jr, but with Bush Sr. The whole process in most political systems is flawed. And although the US system has proven itself to be very inefficient, so has everybody elses' to various degrees, some much worse than the US, who in turn are incredibly pathetic when it comes to economic efficiency. It will not be until legal largesse and political chips be eliminated that a country can even think about becoming efficient. ...................................................................................................... Here is the story. Tax revenue is the largest business in each and every country. Some tax revenues are spent on issues that are not deemed economically efficient , which are in contrast to the businesses of the country which cannot survive unless they are efficient. Also legal costs and laws make up the major component of the lack of economic efficiency. The laws and tax payments in the US are killing the very tax base on which it depends. Solutions.....for example Make the tax business a very small part of the US economy 10% sales tax only Eliminate Political chips..... How ? No more special interests Internet government replaces the current lobbyist and election by advertisement system Categorize government projects and objectives.....minimize their impact on competitive commerce. Establish a worldwide electronic stock exchange and separate the SEC from the legal largesse pig trough of higher payments by continually crisscrossing working for both the police and corporations. The stock exchange has become a US Country Club of lawyers and CEO fraternity brats.....and is the main cause of the lack of wealth distribution. The US wealthiest 1% control over 80% of the wealth in the US....and it is getting even more concentrated. SEC and Legal Largesse are the two major reasons for this. Mandate stock ownership for employees so that this ratio becomes more normal....This will also contribute to efficiency.....and is not debt.... Regulate the regulators....regulate CEO payments...no longer can the police police the police.... Want an example....look at how incestual Goldman Sachs is with the US Government today. Look at the smilies on highly paid ex SEC chiefs on Bloomberg and CNBC. The lists go on and on.... This is easy....and not rocket science....
Ethanol via corn and other food crops such as milo, sweet sorghum , sugar beets, sugar cane and others.... ................................................................................................. Over 30 years ago every land grand university in the US did studies on the economics of ethanol. Ethanol via corn was proven to be unviable as an economical solution. The best model was small production dairy combined units which produced small fuel amounts using baggase refuse for fuel, while feeding left over ddg to dairy cattle where lactation was markedly improved. ADM was another possibility in that more products were formed such as margarine, sweetners, co2, fuel, food and fuel byproducts...but subsidy was still needed. Now the problem is two fold....the subsidy in prices has been incorporated into land costs that are meant for food. Pension plans are now heavily investing in land which create further future problems such as eliminating family farms via corporate farming. Food costs all over the world are skyrocketing whereby most of the populations were already paying over 40% of their incomes for food. If one thinks that things are changing in the US, the change in other countries is 100 fold. And now the US is being looked upon in an increasing negative way.... ............................................................................................. I never thought that it was possible for a couple of below average individuals to cause so much harm to the world. The Bush/Cheney Oil Administration have their agenda and nothing else. The US citizenry has been had big time. And just think, Bush Jr expects to be paid by the very same populace every year until his death, as well as further capitalizing via political chips....Cheney will be moving back to Halliburton, which has left the US for legal reasons.... The US system is broken.