I blame the very popular Bill Clinton for three major flaws: a) After 1992, when cold war had ended, he did not take the opportunity to decrease defense budgets and bring US financial books into good balanced shape. This despite the internet boom and growing economy which was proving as a good tax collector and shaping the books by itself. Decrease in defense budget would have given some good surplus to cancel out debts built up. USSR had broken up in to more than dozen pieces and Russians were barely clinging on to their rusted nukes for defense, all the while selling rest of the weapons to feed themselves. b) After first Persian Gulf war ended, Clinton did not remove the non-military sanctions on Iraq. This resulted in good 500K to 2M Iraqi civilians perishing and this was the main reason why Al Queda rose and Bin Laden rose and why 911 happened. 911 forced US into two wars (although Iraq II was a moronic decision of Bush II). Even today, more than 10 years after 911, US is still fighting AQ and other fanatic Islamic terrorism and spending $100B and up each year. When country goes into war, then its after effects are seen over the whole society, accept it or not. c) Clinton administration was the force behind the sub prime mortgages in order to have poor also have a chance at American dream of owning a house. This gave rise to property and credit bubbles which nearly bankrupted the US in 2008 and shut its financial engine down. US was half an inch from Mega Depression if the stimulus and bail outs were not engineered by the Fed. The whole world would have gone into a financial abyss of many sorts. I am no economist but can be brave enough to say, that other than USD depreciation via inflation, there is little hope for US to come out of the debt mountain. Hope there are some good financial and econometric engineering brains out there who can save the ship, very much hope so !!
Lots of interesting comments. Hadn't really considered it before, but the OP comments about TeeVee and nutmegs about families made me realize that with lots of mothers working, kids were left on their own....TeeVee became a babysitter. A few other points: We were coming out of highly inflationary period, mainly due to LBJ not raising taxes to pay for VN and Nixon's wage/price controls. I was selling RE back then and the prime got as high as 21%. Mortgage rates were 14%ish. We used to dream about rates under 10%. Regarding computers, they were not a factor at the retail level, but certainly at a business level. The only computer I ever saw in a house was a Kaypro. It was in a engineers house I was showing to a buyer. I didn't get my first computer until 1989. I don't think personal computers were much of factor until the www. Regarding the loss of manufacturing jobs: Detroit was producing crap....pure crap. The reason we were losing manufacturing jobs was because what we produced was inferior. Our plants were old and inefficient, our labor policies favored sloth over efficiency. I had a buddy that worked at a GM plant in Pontiac and he said half the crew would show up drunk, or get drunk on their shift. The other thing I would note is that in 1977 the fed mandate became a dual mandate. I think all the recessions since then have been worse. http://www.chicagofed.org/webpages/publications/speeches/our_dual_mandate.cfm
http://michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/30-years-ago-today those are his thoughts, there was an interview on the radio back in 80 area, the author talking said that we ran in 30 year cycles, where we would be a we generation , then a me generation, i hope we are ending a 30 yr run as the me generation, i don't know what correlation it has but in world war2 we had to all become one team a we generation, and when it was over we had a huge boom in the US,i think it's mostly about each individual, the stuff we used to do without thinking because it was right,is now often thought of as being stupid and those doing it should be taken advantage of, everyone should be doing things to make this a better planet ,the old leave things better than you found em adage, all those small individual efforts make a "huge difference" when added up, i think most are doing things to make it better for themselves only, and that lack of a "huge difference" is sorely evident
Just wanted to comment on this one remark above, and perhaps provide some reason for hope. As noted in some other forums, in 2011 dollars U.S. healthcare expenditures are $8,680 per year per capita. This is all the more startling when you consider that some sizable fraction of the population has very little actual consumption of healthcare services in a given year. Our U.S. expenditure amounts in total to about 2.7 Trillion per year. If the U.S. was to merely bring its healthcare costs down to that of the next most expensive care (Switzerland) we would cut our cost by some 1.35 Trillion per year. Compare that number to the national debt, and it quite easy to see that it is not at all impossible to right our financial ship. There are many inefficiencies in government and in the private sector where substantial savings can be achieved, and the money saved put into investment elsewhere that would, in the long run, provide meaningful jobs and also pay big dividends. The two most significant, and obvious, areas of expenditure where the U.S. is out of step with all other nations are medical and military spending. If we were to bring spending in those areas into line with the per capita expenditure of other industrialized nations, our debt problems would vanish. There is more than enough money in the American Economy, but much of it it is in the wrong places.
I absolutely agree with Piezoe. It always amazes me that many people don't even attempt to right the ship but get morose and say what can I do about it. Even worse, they say stuff like, I am OK I will be in my cave. Sure, and 200000 people will be coming to find you and your cave if the SHTF. I think that too many people are standing up asking someone else to row for them. One step might be to demand an audit of the functions of government and to layoff some of the "representatives" who keep lying to the people and voting differently from what they said they would when running for office. (The road to a very warm place is paved with good intentions.) Debt is merely a symptom of a bigger problem, a population that lets government do whatever they want to without repercussions - often because they are afraid and watch too much TV. The constitution and laws are used to keep people in place and simply ignored by certain classes. But the power has never left the hands of the ordinary citizen working together to do the right things. The solutions are the same as every family going for debt, but they can't begin until a crisis happens large enough to make people accept that changes must happen and they begin to organize to change things in a positive way. The government can not save you from anything, only you the people can. Tough times don't last but tough people do.
The tax reductions implemented in 1981 shifted the monetary burden on the govt which is why the national debt increased 100% in 8 years.
The two most significant, and obvious, areas of expenditure where the U.S. is out of step with all other nations are medical and military spending. If we were to bring spending in those areas into line with the per capita expenditure of other industrialized nations, our debt problems would vanish. There is more than enough money in the American Economy, but much of it it is in the wrong places. [/QUOTEI Good observation but also a stale one!! I am not disagreeing or taunting you but these facts are known to the leaders in various fields politics, economics, business, military etc. BUT STILL they do not do anything about it? WHY? ARE THEY TRAITORS?? No use finding savings or solutions, it will be a futile effort. Other than inflation or outright military style economic dictatorship, there is no hope for the US DEBT.
Yes! Reagan said once that his greatest disappointment was that the tax cuts under his administration did not increase revenues as he had hoped. Revenues did go up after the cuts, but the entire increase in revenue is explained by increased government outlays accompanied by huge deficits. After the tax rates in the upper brackets were lowered, there was relatively little difference between the rate in the top bracket and the lowest bracket, where the rate was actually increased. This compression largely did away with the steeply progressive nature of the income tax brackets that existed from Eisenhower through Carter. It is difficult to say what role this played in widening the income gap between the wealthy and the middle class. It seems likely, however, to have been a contributing factor.
Yea but not many people had a PC in the 1980s I remember when a 20mb drive was like 3 grand back then. So it can't be attributed to the PC