Media lists the 'socialist' countries as the best economic performers

[MorkandMindy]

According to the liberal media among others, most of the best performing nations have substantial socialist sections in their economies while the capitalist countries are helping out a lot by raising the other countries through occupying the places at the bottom.

The countries at the top are usually the same ones though swapping places from year to year.

3rd 4th 5th etc from the bottom move around depending on who is borrowing money big time for some project, but the bottom two are always the same.

 

[MorkandMindy]

We've been at the bottom so long, both countries I've lived in, that we use the term Current Account Deficit instead of Current Account Balance.

 

[MorkandMindy]

But it doesn't have to stay that way.

We haven't had easy access to the data for decades, sure it's there but there's been a load of confusion as it seems everyone talks about GDP growth which doesn't mean much of anything, heck, corruption increases the GDP whereas if you marry your housekeeper it goes down.

Now that we are aware of it we really need to put together a plan to fix it.

 

[MorkandMindy]

1. Stop sending all of our money out of the country.

Start this Christmas by making our own Christmas decorations.

 

[MorkandMindy]

2. Stop selling our companies.

I made MRI magnets for a number of years bringing in a lot of money from other countries. Then the company was sold for a song to Siemens in Germany. That was the British who were so keen to sell everything - notice them second to the bottom of the CAB list, but the US does it too. As a general rule the Germans do not sell their companies.

And the reason is largely socialism - the workers in the company have to agree to sell it, and the town for it to be moved elsewhere, and it has to be in the country's best interests.

So VW is still there and it is now huge:

 

[MorkandMindy]

Is 1v16&17 stop doing wrong. Learn to do right;
We can fix it!

 

[tall73]

We've been at the bottom so long, both countries I've lived in, that we use the term Current Account Deficit instead of Current Account Balance.

View attachment 285749

This appears to be a chart from Wikipedia. Can you please link to the article so I can read a bit more on the context?

 

[MorkandMindy]

 

[MorkandMindy]

This appears to be a chart from Wikipedia. Can you please link to the article so I can read a bit more on the context?

List of countries by current account balance - Wikipedia

and I got the numbers for the last two rows from the imf list of countries

The graph in the post above shows what I consider to be useful context - I was in the US for most of the Reagan Era and the media was going ape s*** over how wonderful Reagan was and how good for the economy while the actual economic figures plummeted to depths never seen before. As usual the public chose to believe the media.

 

[MIDutch]

1. Stop sending all of our money out of the country.

Start this Christmas by making our own Christmas decorations.

Maybe you should tell Walmart that, and all of the people who shop in Walmart.

It wasn't too long ago that Walmart REQUIRED that companies who wanted to sell product in Walmart HAD to have them made overseas to lower prices:

Secrets - Wal-Mart And China - A Joint Venture | Is Wal-Mart Good For America? | FRONTLINE | PBS

It wasn't too long ago they had a marketing scheme that claimed "Made In America" for lots of it's products event though that wasn't true:

FACT SHEET: Walmart's Made in America Pledge - Alliance for American Manufacturing

You can demand anything you want, but until AMERICANS are willing to pay two or three times as much for a product they can buy cheap at Walmart, it ain't going to happen.

 

[MorkandMindy]

We chose to reject socialism and to continue with cut throat competition, and to make it increasingly vicious.

We were misinformed, we were told that is the only way ahead, and that is where the money is, so now there we are with the other capitalist country, Britain, at the bottom of the economic performance table.

The rules we have for companies and very rich people who are pretty much the same is: pay as little as possible and make the largest profit possible.

And that companies have no other responsibility except to their shareholders and that is to maximize profit.

To complain that Walmart and Amazon and other companies are buying the cheapest items possible and that means from overseas is to complain they are doing what we have told them to do. And as a rule neither very rich people nor companies should pay more tax than they can be forced to, and that is usually nothing, they would have to be stupid to pay more.

Those are the rules we made that we somehow thought would make everyone rich.

 

[MIDutch]

We chose to reject socialism and to continue with cut throat competition, and to make it increasingly vicious.

We were misinformed, we were told that is the only way ahead, and that is where the money is, so now there we are with the other capitalist country, Britain, at the bottom of the economic performance table.

The rules we have for companies and very rich people who are pretty much the same is: pay as little as possible and make the largest profit possible.

And that companies have no other responsibility except to their shareholders and that is to maximize profit.

To complain that Walmart and Amazon and other companies are buying the cheapest items possible and that means from overseas is to complain they are doing what we have told them to do. And as a rule neither very rich people nor companies should pay more tax than they can be forced to, and that is usually nothing, they would have to be stupid to pay more.

Those are the rules we made that we somehow thought would make everyone rich.

Yeah, I don't see any way we get out of it either.

 

[dogs4thewin]

We chose to reject socialism and to continue with cut throat competition, and to make it increasingly vicious.

We were misinformed, we were told that is the only way ahead, and that is where the money is, so now there we are with the other capitalist country, Britain, at the bottom of the economic performance table.

The rules we have for companies and very rich people who are pretty much the same is: pay as little as possible and make the largest profit possible.

And that companies have no other responsibility except to their shareholders and that is to maximize profit.

To complain that Walmart and Amazon and other companies are buying the cheapest items possible and that means from overseas is to complain they are doing what we have told them to do. And as a rule neither very rich people nor companies should pay more tax than they can be forced to, and that is usually nothing, they would have to be stupid to pay more.

Those are the rules we made that we somehow thought would make everyone rich.

As for that last sentence I am not sure anyone thought that everyone would be rich.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Yeah, I don't see any way we get out of it either.

In my opinion a way out is in my first line, the US has some socialism but it has to be moved down a bit to help the lower paid rather than the Middle Class. It is then a simple matter to make it a safety net rather than a maybe or maybe not net.

We chose to reject socialism and to continue with cut throat competition, and to make it increasingly vicious. ...

The existing 'socialism' is really Keynesian Economics, that the government steps in where the private sector fails to provide enough employment.

But what has happened in the US is the medical care cost system it the huge scam, so lots of fairly highly paid administrators have been hired to run the system which has grown in personnel and complexity, costs have been deliberately pushed up which has achieved two objectives:

1. Unemployment has been reduced among the people who matter
2. GDP has been increased - all that pointless movement of money increases GDP

US politicians focus on the ever rising GDP and pretend it really means something.