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the unraveling of America

justabubba

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How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era - Rolling Stone

do yourself a favor and read this excellent article
it's like looking into a mirror

the reader may not like what is described
but it is authentic

this describes where our nation is today, and how and why we got here

a representative excerpt follows:
... COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken. As the crisis unfolded, with another American dying every minute of every day, a country that once turned out fighter planes by the hour could not manage to produce the paper masks or cotton swabs essential for tracking the disease. The nation that defeated smallpox and polio, and led the world for generations in medical innovation and discovery, was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand. ...
 
The rest of the world is dealing with the virus too. It's not just America.
 
The rest of the world is dealing with the virus too. It's not just America.

But they know how to deal with it better than us. Americans are so damn arrogant
 
How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era - Rolling Stone

do yourself a favor and read this excellent article
it's like looking into a mirror

the reader may not like what is described
but it is authentic

this describes where our nation is today, and how and why we got here

a representative excerpt follows:

It's all getting very real and very scary. I thought for a little while that we could stop this destruction of our country, but I lost hope months ago. I really think it's too late. There's so much going on that's being put forth by Trump that will indelibly impact life in this country.

For instance, Trump threatens to sign an EO that will end payroll taxes for workers. He claims this will help ease the burden of million of people that are out of work and out of unemployment benefits. But if people aren't working, how will an elimination of payroll tax help them?

John Roberts from Fox asked Trump in his press briefing today, where will the money come from to fund Social Security since it now comes from payroll taxes? Trump told John Roberts that the money will come from the 'general fund'. Roberts reminded Trump that the general fund is broke (24 trillion dollars broke) so where would they get the money to fund Social Security? Trump had no clear answer and broke of the conversation and left the briefing room.

So there's that. Trump plans to defund Social Security, plain and simple. If he did that, the SS fund would be bankrupt by 2025 leaving millions of people with absolutely no income at all. Essentially, they will be receiving a death sentence.

Then there's Trump's endorsement of Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia. She won her primary for a seat in Congress. Marjorie Taylor Green is a QAnon supporter. Think about that one. QAnon isn't just one of these fringe conspiracy theory groups working in the dark web. They have thousands of groups all over the country with more than 3 million members and followers nationwide.

QAnon has promoted conspiracies that involve Hollywood stars, everyone in the Hollywood elite from Tom Hanks to anyone famous, radio personalities, and democrats like Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Nancy Pelosi. QAnon claims they are all trafficking children and in some cases 'eating' children. And some day the secret war against all this that they are waging with the help of Donald Trump, will some day all be gathered up, marched into Guantanamo Bay and executed.

This is what the Trump party is condoning. This is what the Trump party is encouraging. And now there's a QAnon Congressional nominee in Georgia, an Evangelical Christian who equates to the republican base and people will listen to her.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon Supporter, Wins House Primary in Georgia - The New York Times
 
Are they?

Agreed...the rest of the world does not seem to be coping any better than we are...and covid is only one of our many problems..."we" meaning mankind in general...
 
What an absolutely wonderful thread. Not just for the article but for the gentle slap on the ass for what we have lost. A fair share of people know the facts in the read and yet are mostly powerless and helpless to effect change all by themselves. Thank you so much for pointing out this wonderful article. Some of the parts are painful. >
.
,.. In truth, at least in economic terms, the country of the 1950s resembled Denmark as much as the America of today. Marginal tax rates for the wealthy were 90 percent. The salaries of CEOs were, on average, just 20 times that of their mid-management employees.

Today, the base pay of those at the top is commonly 400 times that of their salaried staff, and perks. The elite one percent of Americans control $30 trillion of assets, while the bottom half have more debt than assets. The three richest Americans have more money than the poorest 160 million of their countrymen. Fully a fifth of American households have zero or negative net worth — are two paychecks removed from bankruptcy. Though living in a nation that celebrates itself as the wealthiest in history, most Americans live on a high wire, with no safety net to brace a fall.
 
How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era - Rolling Stone

do yourself a favor and read this excellent article
it's like looking into a mirror

the reader may not like what is described
but it is authentic

this describes where our nation is today, and how and why we got here

a representative excerpt follows:

There are a lot of reasons for us being in the shape we are in as a country today, but one of them is we have spent the last 30 years creating a pyramid scheme of useless jobs across the private sector.

For example, we need marketing people, but we do not need nearly as many marketing people as we have people graduating with marketing degrees. However, since we have so many marketing people, when they have the power to do so, they hire more marketing people, who then see the need for more marketing people, and so on and so forth.

The average IT division these days will have more people in digital marketing, project managers, product managers, user experience managers, and so on than they will have software engineers. In fact, they will have several times more. My brother is an electrician, most of the electrical outfits he has worked for in the last few years had more project managers than electricians. Throw on top of those expensive management consultants, marketing consultants, process consultants on so on that companies routinely bring in, despite there being zero evidence they ever make any difference in a company's performance. This kind of crap is true across the private sector these days. You want to know to why the United States has averaged just 2% or so GDP growth for over 10 years now, just look at how most companies are run. In a typical medium to a large company, these days, a third or more of the payroll is utterly useless to the company's performance.

Here in Kansas City, they built a new highrise hotel near the convention center. It took them over 3 years to build it. I have spent a lot of time in China over the last 15 years, in China they would have had that hotel up in 6 months. Here in Kansas City, they are building a new airport terminal, it is scheduled to take 5 years total. In China, they would have it built in just a year to 18 months tops. We are supposed to extend the streetcar/tram line another 5 miles or so. It won't be done until at least 2025. In that time, Shanghai will have easily added over 100 miles of additional subway lines.

Is some of this due to excessive regulation in the United States, sure, but most of it is how companies are structured in the US these days and how they operate. A typical American company these days has far more people generating work for others than they have doing the actual work and to be honest, it only seems to be getting worse.
 
But they know how to deal with it better than us. Americans are so damn arrogant
Mostly their citizens did what they were told = they stayed inside or wore masts.
 
Are they?

Some nations - make that many - are dealing with the Corona virus better than the USA. Sweden is one of them.

It helps not having an idiot in charge. Mr Trump's defects become more apparent by the day and I hope for everyone's sake that he is not re-elected.
 
Agreed...the rest of the world does not seem to be coping any better than we are...and covid is only one of our many problems..."we" meaning mankind in general...

Really?

Screenshot-2020-08-12-Analysis-Trump-says-we-re-doing-better-than-most-other-countries-on-coronavi.png


Europe Reopening For Tourism: Countries Officially Open - Travel Off Path

Europe Reopening For Tourism: Countries Officially Open
 
Really?

Screenshot-2020-08-12-Analysis-Trump-says-we-re-doing-better-than-most-other-countries-on-coronavi.png


Europe Reopening For Tourism: Countries Officially Open - Travel Off Path

Europe Reopening For Tourism: Countries Officially Open

Really...

What is the global situation now?
Only if we end the pandemic everywhere can we end the pandemic anywhere. The entire world has the same goal: cases of COVID-19 need to go to zero.

The chart below shows which countries are making progress to this goal and which are not.

The trajectories show the daily number of confirmed cases. But the widely available data on confirmed cases only becomes meaningful when it can be interpreted in light of how much a country is testing. This is why Our World in Data built the global database on COVID-19 testing and the line colors in this chart show whether a country is testing adequately or not.

A country is not testing adequately when it is finding a case for every few tests they perform. Here it is likely that the true number of new cases is much higher than the number of cases that were confirmed by tests. When the positive rate of tests is high the line is shown in shades of red.

Blue lines mean that a country does many tests for each case it finds; the testing effort in these countries is adequate.

To be safe anywhere, every region in the world needs to make progress against the pandemic – and this means dark blue lines hitting zero.

Progress is possible – some countries bent the curve of new cases and are monitoring the outbreak well. But globally we are very far from the goal and the global number of confirmed cases is rising extremely fast.

Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) - Statistics and Research - Our World in Data
 
There are a lot of reasons for us being in the shape we are in as a country today, but one of them is we have spent the last 30 years creating a pyramid scheme of useless jobs across the private sector.

For example, we need marketing people, but we do not need nearly as many marketing people as we have people graduating with marketing degrees. However, since we have so many marketing people, when they have the power to do so, they hire more marketing people, who then see the need for more marketing people, and so on and so forth.

The average IT division these days will have more people in digital marketing, project managers, product managers, user experience managers, and so on than they will have software engineers. In fact, they will have several times more. My brother is an electrician, most of the electrical outfits he has worked for in the last few years had more project managers than electricians. Throw on top of those expensive management consultants, marketing consultants, process consultants on so on that companies routinely bring in, despite there being zero evidence they ever make any difference in a company's performance. This kind of crap is true across the private sector these days. You want to know to why the United States has averaged just 2% or so GDP growth for over 10 years now, just look at how most companies are run. In a typical medium to a large company, these days, a third or more of the payroll is utterly useless to the company's performance.

Here in Kansas City, they built a new highrise hotel near the convention center. It took them over 3 years to build it. I have spent a lot of time in China over the last 15 years, in China they would have had that hotel up in 6 months. Here in Kansas City, they are building a new airport terminal, it is scheduled to take 5 years total. In China, they would have it built in just a year to 18 months tops. We are supposed to extend the streetcar/tram line another 5 miles or so. It won't be done until at least 2025. In that time, Shanghai will have easily added over 100 miles of additional subway lines.

Is some of this due to excessive regulation in the United States, sure, but most of it is how companies are structured in the US these days and how they operate. A typical American company these days has far more people generating work for others than they have doing the actual work and to be honest, it only seems to be getting worse.

Your words are so true. I liked this part>> ...built a new highrise hotel near the convention center. It took them over 3 years to build it." I understand. It's utterly amazing how long some projects take nowadays. I love to point out this little fact regarding what you say> I've told people that the Empire State building was built in one year and 45 days. They usually exclaim.."No way!" ..I say naturally...Yep...they didn't screw around so much as they do now.
(I do realize that safety standards were rather lax also)
 
Clinton shipped all our manufacturing abroad and liberal educators swapped STEM for feminista studies.

And now you wonder why we can't manufacture a paper mask or create a vaccine?

You folks are a trip. Next you'll be wondering out loud why Seattle, Portland, and San Fransisco's tourism dried up.
 
Thanks for that quote - I immediately recognized it as typical RS mindless bull****.

what parts of the article did you find other than factual?
 
Did my post confuse you?

you alleged the information was bull****:
Thanks for that quote - I immediately recognized it as typical RS mindless bull****.

which then caused me to ask what about the information should be found other than factual

thus far, you have been unable/unwilling to share with us what about that article should be found to be bull****

point it out, and defend your post on this debate site
 
you alleged the information was bull****:


which then caused me to ask what about the information should be found other than factual

thus far, you have been unable/unwilling to share with us what about that article should be found to be bull****

point it out, and defend your post on this debate site
LOL, and you think I want to debate bull****? Why?
 
How Covid-19 Signals the End of the American Era - Rolling Stone

do yourself a favor and read this excellent article
it's like looking into a mirror

the reader may not like what is described
but it is authentic

this describes where our nation is today, and how and why we got here

a representative excerpt follows:

America has has it easy since WWII.

The mindset of most of our elected officials to stand out in politics is to create false narratives to stir up the ignorant.

Other than the civil rights movement of 1964, it's been all noise for the sycophants to cling to.
 
What an absolutely wonderful thread. Not just for the article but for the gentle slap on the ass for what we have lost. A fair share of people know the facts in the read and yet are mostly powerless and helpless to effect change all by themselves. Thank you so much for pointing out this wonderful article. Some of the parts are painful. >
.
,.. In truth, at least in economic terms, the country of the 1950s resembled Denmark as much as the America of today. Marginal tax rates for the wealthy were 90 percent. The salaries of CEOs were, on average, just 20 times that of their mid-management employees.

Today, the base pay of those at the top is commonly 400 times that of their salaried staff, and perks. The elite one percent of Americans control $30 trillion of assets, while the bottom half have more debt than assets. The three richest Americans have more money than the poorest 160 million of their countrymen. Fully a fifth of American households have zero or negative net worth — are two paychecks removed from bankruptcy. Though living in a nation that celebrates itself as the wealthiest in history, most Americans live on a high wire, with no safety net to brace a fall.

I swear the liberals who don't act like drug addicts act like drug dealers when it comes to other people's money.
 
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