^first 100% accurate post made in this thread (other then mine)

From Today's Washington Post article "Europe's Real Problem: A Lack of Growth" by Fareed Zakaria

The answer is entrepreneurship replacing socialism.

Ultimately, however, Europe’s crisis is one of growth. The problem is not so much that Greece has been unwilling to make sacrifices. It has made many. But Greece’s budget numbers look bleak because its growth forecast looks bleak. It needs to address a much larger question of competitiveness. What can the Greek economy do to attract capital and investment? And at what wage levels? These are questions most European countries will need to answer to fully solve their problems. Italy’s economy has not grown for an entire decade. No debt restructuring will work if it stays stagnant for another decade. Even Germany is not immune, with an average growth rate of only 1.5 percent. German officials know that, with a declining population, in five to seven years the country is likely to grow at an annual rate of just 1 percent. That’s not much of an engine for Europe.

Europe needs a crisis agenda to get out of its bind, but beyond that it needs a growth agenda, which involves radical reform. The fact is that Western economies — with high wages, generous middle-class and political subsidies, and complex regulations and taxes — have become sclerotic. Now they face pressures from three fronts: demography (an aging population), technology (which has allowed companies to do much more with fewer people) and globalization (which has allowed manufacturing and services to locate across the world). If Europe — and, for that matter, the United States — cannot adjust to this new landscape, it might escape this storm only to enter another.

Again the answer in entrepreneurship replacing socialism.

"Again the answer (sic) in entrepreneurship replacing socialism"

Ahhhh, yes those awful western *socialist* states... Godamn them!

I don't want to damn them. I want to save them. Socialism is the subtle tool of the mega corporations to keep control of populations through incrementally increasing their dependency on the state.

Today's crop of central planners and big spending politicians could learn a thing or two about economics from Henry Hazlitt's classic bestseller, Economics in One Lesson, published in 1946. Common sense doesn't have an expiration date.
"There is no more persistent and influential faith in the world today than faith in government spending," Hazlitt wrote. "Everywhere government spending is presented as a panacea for all our economic ills. Is private industry partially stagnant? We can fix it all by government spending. Is there unemployment? That is obviously due to 'insufficient private purchasing power.' The remedy is just as obvious. All that is necessary is for the government to spend enough to make up the 'deficiency.'"

The deficiency that needs to be addressed is entrepreneurship.
If we want an expanding economy then we need to remove as many impediments to entrepreneurship as we can.

Every time TC & Meher (mis)uses the word socialism, a kitten dies.

One thing the govt should spend more money on, but in smarter ways, in order to address a deficiency in entrepreneurship - is education. Get everyone access to a good education (instead of the privileged few).

Entrepreneurs are abandoning states with high taxation, endless regulation, and bad business environments like Illinois, Obama's home state and political template.


Illinois is losing the hearts and minds of the people who put people to work here.

The chief executives at some of Illinois' largest companies think economic conditions are better in neighboring states. They expect economic growth here to lag the nation's growth. They believe Illinois taxes are a roadblock to investment. They have no faith that political leaders will use the 67 percent income tax increase imposed this year to put state government on firmer financial ground.

The business leaders have no confidence in Illinois' ability to compete with its neighboring states.

They have no confidence in its ability to resolve its fiscal crisis.

They have no confidence in the state's political leaders.

The Chicago Tribune editorial board surveyed 45 chief executives at large, publicly held companies based in Illinois. The results should be a wake-up call. The executives delivered a thudding vote of no confidence in the leadership and direction of the state they call home.

Their views are neatly summed up by Bob Eck, chief executive of Anixter International, who faults Illinois leaders for failing to establish a realistic timeline and make the difficult decisions needed to solve the state's fiscal problems.

"We can't keep going this way," Eck told us. "If we saw the way out, we would accept the pain."

What are business leaders looking for? Eck credits New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for his "honest dialogue with the public" about the hard choices necessary to fix a state in poor financial condition.

"We know what the problem is," says Robert Livingston, chief executive of Dover Corp. "So what do we do and when do we do it? That's what people are waiting for: The when and the how."

Only two of the 45 executives we surveyed say they expect the state's economic condition to improve in the coming year. Only six of the 45 say economic conditions in Illinois are better than they are in nearby states.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-ceosurvey1-20111023,0,216291.story

At its heart America is a meritocracy.
President Obama is a shining example of this, even though he doesn't realize the importance of meritocracy to the future of the country.
Meritocracy is important because it is the basis of social mobility that propels the gifted individual from the lower rungs of society to the towering peaks.
The flipside of meritocracy that Obama and many, many others forgot about is the need for those at the top to fail and experience a cataclysmic fall from the heights to the depths.
For America to succeed we need individuals with merit to succeed and individuals who lack merit to fail.
The arguments by Obama that the playing field isn't equal in America is demolished by his own life story.
Either the playing field is level and allowed Obama to rise on his merits or the playing field was skewed by affirmative action and paternalism that allowed him to rise up as a favored tool of the power structure.
So we need to remember that there are winners and losers in life.
The individual who spends $100,000 on an Art History degree from Harvard does not deserve any preference over the individual who spends $25,000 on a business management degree from the University of Phoenix.
Each individual made their choice and should live with the consequences.
That is what a meritocracy is all about.

"At its heart America is a meritocracy. "

And at its heart fascism is just misguided paternalism..... right?


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/opinion/06herbert.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/17/social-immobility-climbin_n_501788.html




The key findings relating to intergenerational mobility include the following:

Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.
Children born to the middle quintile of parental family income ($42,000 to $54,300) had about the same chance of ending up in a lower quintile than their parents (39.5 percent) as they did of moving to a higher quintile (36.5 percent). Their chances of attaining the top five percentiles of the income distribution were just 1.8 percent.
Education, race, health and state of residence are four key channels by which economic status is transmitted from parent to child.
African American children who are born in the bottom quartile are nearly twice as likely to remain there as adults than are white children whose parents had identical incomes, and are four times less likely to attain the top quartile.
The difference in mobility for blacks and whites persists even after controlling for a host of parental background factors, children’s education and health, as well as whether the household was female-headed or receiving public assistance.
After controlling for a host of parental background variables, upward mobility varied by region of origin, and is highest (in percentage terms) for those who grew up in the South Atlantic and East South Central regions, and lowest for those raised in the West South Central and Mountain regions.
By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility: our parents’ income is highly predictive of our incomes as adults. Intergenerational mobility in the United States is lower than in France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark. Among high-income countries for which comparable estimates are available, only the United Kingdom had a lower rate of mobility than the United States.

Key findings relating to short-run, year-to-year income movements include the following:

The overall volatility of household income increased significantly between 1990-91 and 1997-98 and again in 2003-04.
Since 1990-91, there has been an increase in the share of households who experienced significant downward short-term mobility. The share that saw their incomes decline by $20,000 or more (in real terms) rose from 13.0 percent in 1990-91 to 14.8 percent in 1997-98 to 16.6 percent in 2003-04.
The middle class is experiencing more insecurity of income, while the top decile is experiencing less. From 1997-98 to 2003-04, the increase in downward short-term mobility was driven by the experiences of middle-class households (those earning between $34,510 and $89,300 in 2004 dollars). Households in the top quintile saw no increase in downward short-term mobility, and households in the top decile ($122,880 and up) saw a reduction in the frequency of large negative income shocks.
For the middle class, an increase in income volatility has led to an increase in the frequency of large negative income shocks, which may be expected to translate to an increase in financial distress.
The median household was no more upwardly mobile in 2003-04, a year when GDP grew strongly, than it was it was during the recession of 1990-91.
Upward short-term mobility for those in the bottom quintile has improved since 1990-91, with no significant offsetting increase in downward short-term mobility.
Households whose adult members all worked more than 40 hours per week for two years in a row were more upwardly mobile in 1990-91 and 1997-98 than households who worked fewer hours. Yet this was not true in 2003-04, suggesting that people who work long hours on a consistent basis no longer appear to be able to generate much upward mobility for their families.

Entrepreneurship does have a down side.
Airline stewardesses were much better looking in the 1970's than they are today.
In the 1970's government regulated airline fares so airlines hired the best looking stewardesses they could to try to attract passengers since they couldn't compete on price.

Alas once deregulation arrived the entrepreneurs at the airlines realizes that the flying public was much more interested in lower fares and professionalism than ditzy blonde bimbos as flight attendants.

Those were the days though. Jet-setter is a phrase long on the younger generations.