Reply #40: "And you think this is going to cause economic recovery?" [View All]

[MADem]

Why YES, I do!

Why? Because it's worked BEFORE. That IS how economies, from Ireland to Japan to Canada and elsewhere, recover. I've seen it a number of times in my lifetime.

I wasn't a "student or young person" who was "partying, thanks to the cheap yen." I was an adult living and working in Japan for the US government. That was a few decades ago, too. My point, that apparently whooshed right over your head in your eagerness to categorize me in snarky fashion, was that currencies fluctuate, economies do dip (or dollars do get unreasonably strong), but most importantly, that you're not going to get that exchange rate nowadays, and you haven't been able to get it for a long, long time.

See what ass-uming gets you? It sure doesn't help you win any discussion points.

One thing you don't seem to get about money, despite your protestations--it really DOES ebb and flow. This is the nature of commerce. And another thing you don't seem to get is that tourism is actually a huge sector of our economy. So's "higher education." So are a number of other ventures that bring foreign investment and consumers to our shores when the market conditions are right. We are a large cog in a WORLD economy, you see.

Something you don't seem to get about PROPERTY, though--it doesn't ebb or flow. The Japanese or Saudis cannot "take it with them." The best they can try to do is "Buy low, sell high."

The world did not end when "Them Saudis (of course, the word used sounded more like bag heads) bought up all of New York," or "Them Japanese done bought up Pebble Beach and all of Hawaii." They bought when the dollar was cheap, and even though they lost dollars when they sold their properties because they waited too long, they sold when the dollar was dearer, so they didn't take a complete bath.

All of this, like it or not, has very little to do with your rather pompous and didactic sermon on love and hope in the short term. Nice words, those, but pretty meaningless in the context of this discussion. Getting angry at me because I'm not about to stop the world and demand that everyone drive a hybrid or a bicycle and grow organic tomatoes in their backyard or do other "peace, love, and sustainable" stuff is pretty silly, too.

It's the MARKET, that you disdain, and not your angry lecturing, that drives that sort of behavior.

People thought that London couldn't get any filthier or more unhealthy back in the days of "London Fog"--which was actually soot from all the coal fires. Go there now--the air is quite breathable, much nicer than LA. And they haven't put "commerce" or "growth" on the back burner, either. They haven't "drawn down." They're simply behaving sensibly. If you want to drive your car into the city, you certainly can, but you are going to pay for the privilege, and that has had the effect of limiting private vehicles entering the city. They are, of course using cleaner climate control fuels in their buildings nowadays, too. And they have WAY more people and buildings now than they did fifty to a hundred years ago. "Growing smarter" or "growing sustainably" is not impossible, and when market forces press hard enough, it IS what happens. Most homes in the US didn't have a single compact fluorescent bulb in 1995--now you'd be hard put to find one that doesn't have at least one, and frequently many more than that, today.

Your last paragraph is nothing but insults and suppositions, save the first two sentences, which are right on the mark.

I'm probably older than you--I'm retired. And if anyone has "laughable gaps in logic" it's not me. You do, though, have an inability to argue without being rude, obstreperous, and personally insulting, to say nothing of simplistic--but that's your issue. It doesn't, FWIW, help your arguments, that approach.

You have a nice day, now. Take a Happiness Pill or something. Your rather condescending method of communicating makes you seem angry and out of sorts. When the economy recovers in a few years, as it will, put a little salsa on your words and make a nice lunch of them, why don't you?

:hi: