We Give To The Needy, Not The Greedy

Yes, a few other people have mentioned America is in debt... I'm still reading up on the whole thing on the net, I didn't realise the US was in debt...

The wealth situation in America is trending towards the situation we see in many third world countries. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of an insular upper class. The upper class uses this wealth to coopt the government, usually for the purpose of lower taxation. The government, deprived of income from the wealthy, either attempts to extract more taxes from the poor and middle class, or fades into irrelevancy. The end result is sometimes a de facto corporate state, with multinationals controlling security, political and social systems for the good of their own bottom lines.

The America haters are the ones attempting to destroy our government from within, choking off its income, splurging on oil wars and corporate welfare, hogtying regulatory agencies and allowing dirty and unsafe industries to flourish. The impotence of FEMA was just the most visible recent manifestation of a directed and deliberate agenda. Our recourse is to make our displeasure known at the polls, so, as Lincoln said, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth". We are not for sale.

he link below is to the national debt clock.....we're only adding 1.63 billion to it a day now ....whew maybe we can afford a popsickle now

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Apparently, I'm not the only one dishing back "rubbish."

First and foremost, your original post is highly insensitive, especially considering that the rescue efforts are still underway.

Secondly, your post was not at all crafted to reflect your supposed desire for a purely fiscal discussion. Your post pre-supposes that the US is completely self-reliant, and further hypothesizes that the US is merely a greed monger looking for a handout. Should we not be expected to respond to such an accusation in kind??

Thirdly, go right ahead and mute me. That would, however, seem to be an act of cowardice. How about addressing my real questions?

paolo, i believe jsecure has said, more than once, that he used a poor choice of words in his initial post/thread title. he seems to have listened to everyone's posts with an open mind, and taken in the information given to him. he is not harping on the fact that the US is greedy. i think you are overreacting a bit.

just my 2 cents. :\

I didn't come into this thread to rant. However any criticism and ill feelings you're getting, are your own fault.

If you are, as you claim, you're genuinely interested in the financial aspects, they you may want to consider carefully how you post such questions. Especially when a country is still reeling from one the worst natural disasters it has suffered.

Some of us are offended by the title of this thread. Especially when the U.S. has been so generous in helping the rest of the world.

If you consider this a "rant", well too bad. I'm not at all sorry for saying it and I'm not at all sorry for posting it here. Sometimes things slide, sometimes things need to be said.

Perhaps. But, his arrogant responses to my sincerely impassioned posts were quite dis-respectful, and I will not stand by and take it. Here's two-cents back.

Many of us did. The problem was pretty simple at the time - weak opposition. The Democrats couldn't field a good enough candidate, and well... we won't even discuss Election 2000.

It's a faith-based administration. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like our leaders to be thinking of our social and political well-being instead of their personal debt with God. Praying for peace with one hand and firing the big guns with the other doesn't exactly make me feel safe.

As for the debt - well, that behemoth is going to come home to roost eventually. And when it does....

PS: You can Mute from User CP.

The Us has been in debt since before the World Wars if memory serves me right. It is one of those unspoken, uncared of things (keyword: US National Debt). Even with that aside my memory seems to remember the US not requesting aid but others just giving. Infact right now US is leary about aid from contries that are offering it (Fidel Castro/Cuba). Also maybe it is the idea that all these other nations that have had aid in the past from the Us might finally be able to show a helping hand back and they wish to return that favor the US did how ever many days, weeks, months, years, or decades ago.

Also the money is not being requested for government us. It is also being requested for the idea that many do not have insurance against natural disasters and those that do may not have flood insurance (yes it is seperate in many cases) and I bet you private industry and insurance companies will try to get out of having to pay for the damages (as they always do). Therefore much of this money is going to be used to cover such expenses.

We prepare for disaster, we prepare for war, we prepare for disease and illness, we do not prepare for homelessness. The scale of the soon to be "homeless" will be on a scale of that not seen before I think in the US and that is something noone can predict and prepare for.

Well I'll be jiggered. Not all my estimates turn out that well:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4224210.stm

In 1999, the White House proposed an aggressive plan to pay down the debt with budget surpluses. If it had been implemented, it would have freed up the staggering amount of money that the U.S. government spends just servicing the interest on the debt.

Arch-conservative Fed chairman Alan Greenspan supported the plan, opining that it would stimulate the economy much more effectively than tax cuts.

Damn that hanging chad.

Without reading this entire thread and all the politics therein, but just to respond to the original post . . .

I don't believe the U.S. asked for any aid from other countries.

But other countries WANTED to contribute something, in a humanitarian sort of way. They see people suffering and they want to help, it's that simple. The same way we would be compelled to help a country somewhere that had a huge flood. We would be wanting to help those people - regardless of whether the country itself could take care of it all themselves.

Because people - and countries - are moved to help people in times of crisis, quite independantly of which country those people happen to live in, and independantly of the wealth or politics of said country.

I think it's terrific others offered to help. And good that we accepted that help.

coco

Well, no argument there. It just boggles me that we now have a president who, with utter and complete predictability has done an inept and pathetic job and now has approval ratings in the 30's. I want to personally slap silly the 25% that wish they hadn't voted for him while yelling "duh!" at them over and over.



It's faith-based all right... faith in cronyism.

I didnt read this whole post, just this first thread. I feel I should mention this.

Jsecure, how many times has the US stepped up and helped nations out with billions of dollars in the past 100 years? Much of our dept would not exist if we just turned our back on the rest of the world. We are the first nation that the world turns to for help when something happens to them. All eyes around the world go on the USA to see how us selfish Americans are going to help.

People like you are the reason I am all for closing our borders, cutting off all nations from the help we give them and start worrying about ourselves more. Lets build a self serving economy and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems. It's obvious that decades of good doing is easily forgoten.

Careful, Beau. Jsecure is gonna mute you for this.

Yeah, and it's obvious a few slack jawed Americans still let down the many, by not reading things, not taking the time to understand what's in front of them, rushing through things, letting their gung ho emotions get to the better of them, and generally just being an ass.

Oh well. Everyone else on this thread shows that despite that, there are cool heads and smart minds in the USA, which means the rest of the world will never be able to write the country off as a waste of time. Not as long as the thinkers of the nation keep going.

I think this thread can probably be closed now. Some intriguing people gave me a lot of points to think over, like the US debt, and the closing down of US agencies which deal with disaster relief. Really gave me a much greater insight into the whole situation out there. So I got what I came for.

Now there's just a load of rednecks coming to start fights, which doesn't interest me.

For someone who claims they don't want a fight, you sure throw a bunch of insults around. Perhaps in future you shouldn't let your gung-ho emotions get the better of you and entice you into being an ass.

Yeah see I'm not doing this. I'm not here to trade insults. Thankyou and goodnight.

You know, after thinking this over some more, regardless of the U.S. financial situation, I think it's good for other countries to offer help and good for us to accept it. I mean, Bangledesh has offered to contribute! Can you imagine how empowering that must feel for a nation that is always perceived as a perpetual victim? Same with a lot of the smaller nations - to be the giver sometimes rather than the receiver lets you feel good about yourself.

On the flip side, being able to accept help gracefully in a time of crisis may teach the current leadership of the U.S. a little something about how to work constructively with the international community. That's going to be a valuable survival skill in the years to come.

Yes, I see exactly what you mean there. Countries feel powerful and respected when they're a part of the world economy. I'd swear I remember this happening before by a country helping in a major war, but I can't remember the names...

I'm going to stick my neck out here, but only if you clearly understand that I am not telling you something I believe to be true. It's simply that, as part of trying to grow my understanding of international events, I have begun to collect "alternative viewpoints".

Like the one I posted a couple of days ago about the idea that the Iraq wars might really have been about the US having to prevent world oil beginning to be priced in euros, as the precursor to the dollar being knocked of its pedestal as the worlds standard trusted currency, with various catastrophic results for the US. I am not able to assess how much truth there might be in that one. Nor in the next one.

This next one is even worse, in that it relates to what was just mentioned, and questions the motives and timing of americas entry into WW2, and even WW1 before it. It is a truly unpleasant thing to consider, in view of the huge loss of young american lives to free Europe from Naziism. So brace yourselves, and DONT think that this is MY VIEW. It worries me, but I just can't know. I much prefer it to be false. I collected it. I'll show it to you as an exhibit.

Its in my next post. Don't read it if you can't consider disturbing, even perhaps insulting, scenarios dispassionately but with interest. Particularly don't read it if you lost anyone in that conflict, and are easily offended and upset. The basic idea is that US motives were concealed, self-serving, very clever, and entirely different from what they said. NOT a very friendly thing to suggest. But, as you'll see, not ENTIRELY illogical.

You have been warned.

Hmm.... Good point.

I am glad that your nationalistic posts have some value, however dubious. It is nice to see that posting from an obvious position of ignorance and bias can have a positive effect - you can learn something. Granted, you stepped right back into the ignorant line with the redneck comment, but you can't expect miracles. Baby steps! To think, they say these forums are pointless.

Note: dont read this without reading my previous post, which explains that I am not putting this forward as my view, or as a true statement of the situation. Please do not quote any part out of context to try to give that impression.

I am not an expert, and not referring to notes, so the point of this is the main thrust, not the details.

Right, here we go......

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The logic is as follows. Lets stick with WW2, though the complete story suggests that the strategy of the US in this war may have been largely a re-run of a very similar strategy (a sort of smaller-scale dry-run that proved the viability of the concept) in WW1. Put that aside.

At war start, the European powers were still dominant in the world. Partly through their possession of extensive colonies, with whom they retained monopoly trading rights, excluding the US, and of course because of their extensive manufacturing and other infrastructure.

If the US was to become the predominate world power, these old powers had to be broken, their colonial trading monopolies opened to US goods, or their colonies effectively wiped out, and their infrastructure destroyed. Some task. These were still giants, not yet weaklings.

The US plan, a rerun of a partial success in WW1, was to allow them, or maybe even secretly encourage them, to do all this damage themselves, by waging war against each other.

This should go on until they had sapped each others strength, consumed their financial resources, destroyed each others infrastructure, and lost the strength necessary to control their colonies. Until even the winner would have been very badly weakened, impoverished, damaged, and exhausted.

But the plan went further. If the US watched upon the sidelines until the very best moment of maximum joint exhaustion, it could then intervene, and gather all power to itself. This was to be(and according to the story, was indeed) achieved on two levels.

On the moral level, by appearing as the benevolent and selfless saviour of freedom in Europe (though not until it was practically destroyed).

And financially, by financing the rebuilding of Europe and Japan. This would be done through loans, so huge, so long-lasting and so impossible-to-survive-without that Europe, ally and enemy alike, would remain under US patronage and control, making crippling repayments for many decades. And these loans would only be granted, even to allies, under a whole string of stringent conditions, wiping out the remnants of European power, including trading power. Thus, as an example, Britain had to give the US free and total access to all her huge colonial markets, which were still highly lucrative.

The argument says that it was precisely this, highly successful, strategy which laid the groundwork for the supremacy of the new world, leaving the US not only financially and militarily in the driving seat, but even enjoying all the fruits of moral superiority, and the undying gratitude of the victims of its plan, appearing as the noble selfless saviours of Europe.

If you believe this, you might ask for what those American boys died. Even if they were lied to about the selflessless of the motive, would they have nevertheless still been willing to fight, if it brought their nation to supremacy in the world, as (on this view) it did ? It's an interesting question.
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There you are. What do you think ? Is it totally false, a vicious calumny dreamed up by the america-hating europeans who can't stand having to be grateful? Is it a serious indictment of US greed, deception and manipulativeness ? Is it a paeon of praise to one of the most brilliantly successful military/political operations of all time, a hidden work of genius ?

I don't know. I didn't find it on some rabid anti-american site, but being discussed as a possibility in some fairly sane historic/academic circles. I cant find the links I'm sorry. They are hidden away in a compressed archive on a firewire drive somewhere, after I bought a new computer. You could try googling, but it might need a lot of skill.

So what do you think ? Sound plausible to anyone ? I simply do not yet know enough to have an opinion either way, except that it is not inconceivable.

Maybe, like most things, it is partly true. But if something similar really did work well in WW1, it makes it a bit more likely that such a plan, if it existed, might have been a totally intentional strategy of extreme brilliance, rather than a half-accident.....