My wife recently retired and we've had a few conversations on how we will handle our finances. The concept of "money" is not the issue. More to the point our deliberations center on when and how funds arrive in conjunction with our bills. Usually her checks zigged while mine zagged, and 'new money' was always nearby. This got me thinking.

We have a global problem with this very thing, and not just about money. Americans interfere, mostly with good intentions but seldom thinking through to the end results. For example, millions are dying right now in Africa, either by drought, starvation or war. Western countries dumped copious resources into that continent (while mining out the valuable raw materials) to stave off immediate issues. Without long term goals in education and social reconstruction, the newly recharged population bred like rats, died of resulting diseases and butchered each other fighting over the scraps. With our own problems and millions more of them, they have outstripped our ability to fix anything.

Same thing with "fairness" in our country. Discipline of children is rough. Saying 'no' requires time, patience and instruction. (Being a 'mentor.') Out of a crunch for free time it's just easier to feed kids and let a TV babysit them. Then we wonder why they're fat. Since we have an ever-increasing problem with controlling the now uncontrollable, we then build ever-increasing layers of nonsense, like zero-tolerance programs, "no win" sports and self esteem outcome based instruction.

When they move back home because they have no skills or social mores we wonder what happened. We hear the phrase "no jobs" constantly. Yet, we also hear that foreigners take the jobs we refuse to do.

In the end, it wasn't that hard for my wife and I to get out of our problem. I rode the girlie bike more, we dined out less, I sold off a bunch of personal knives and I took in some work. My guess is that you guys are doing the same. I have no advice for you, however. The world needs a good fracken enema, and next week our own government will compromise on the debt ceiling. WTF?

Here's one solution that the politicians will never come up with.

Stop the handouts to all the other countries and feed our poor instead.
Cut the politicians salaries before the work force's.
Term limits on all offices.
Out law lobbyists.
Politicians don't get paid unless they balance the budget / do the job they were hired for.
No more "perks", (endless air trips and entitlements).
Cut needless government appointments/jobs.
End union power/control of government.

Pretty easy... except the crooks won't do it.

Tax and spend, just like junk food and tv.

Amen, blood, but think about the ramifications of what you just said. You get it. Seems obvious.

When a bunch of bikers are smarter than your President, we're in trouble. Aren't we supposed the "party hard, nice lookin' corpse" hell-raisers? If we can figure this out, what's the problem with polite society?

I agree with your assessment on 'tax and spend.' The problem is that we hit the end of that road. We can tax all we want, but the only people who will be spending are the Chinese, you know, the guys with all of the American money...

Yesterdays headline "New Jobs and Lower Unemployment"
Todays headline "Unemployment rose to 9.2 percent as hiring stalls"

The tail waging the dog

It's July 9, 2011 as I write this. One of our front page newspaper stories reports the same figures. It also states that we need a new 300,000 jobs per month to turn this around, but we only got a fraction of this.

I'm not sure a Chief Executive has any power at all to really stimulate employment, even a conservative one regime. And trying to accomplish this at the governmental level is suicide by not addressing our national debt problem and/or just providing "make work" service jobs. Ironically, we just shut NASA down.

My 'adult job' was in finanace. I still believe in a laissez-faire style of economy. A Republic should leave its citizens alone anyway. They will produce what they can sell. And if you're too lazy to work, the problem solves itself.

The gov. borrowed big bags of money to stay in business from China. China also has many/most of our manufacturing jobs now. So not only are we (the US) hemorrhaging interest payments but we are also providing the growing economy and power to a foreign country. China is now showing aggression in the region to our long time Allies. In the near future when we cant afford to keep the ... let's say Navy in business. It's not long before the smell of weakness and quickly blood brings the predators.
I went to buy a new razor, couldn't find any made in the USA, I'm sure they're out there but they weren't in front of me. I found one I liked, looked to see where it was made. PRC, not China but wait??? That is China, the People's Republic of China. I think I'll get the one from the Netherlands.
AS for what to do, raise tariffs on products made outside of the country the gov gets the needed funds and levels the playing field for the home team, (Is what the "Leadership" should be doing). Plus cut the pork spending and Aid to foreign lands until we get education and poverty taken care of here in the states.
Chinese lobbyists are now helping our gov make decisions, it looks like on the surface...

Too bad you don't know a red-white-and-blue biker who knows a thing or three about sharp edges and where to find them. Wait, I'm a knife sharpener...

(No spam, I don't rep for this company. Just did it as a service.)

https://buyamericanchallenge.wordpress.c ... mpetition/

I checked it out, looks like a winner and nice to know USA makes one. Thanks for the heads up.

I was looking at the electric razors, and they weren't made here. I'm going to get a new battery pack, it's less than 10 bucks, I can solder it in easily and the new cutter heads are 25 - I'll keep my razor, which itself is very high quality, its the best the company makes.

So whats up with the 'PRC' instead of Made in China?

No prob, just ask and you shall receive. Check out Braun.

https://wize.com/reviews/best-american-made-shaver



Stands for "Peoples' Republic of China"

Stands for "Peoples' Republic of China"[/quote]

I meant why are they using that instead of "made in china"?