We really do need to be a nation again, but I'm not at all sure just how we go about doing it.

well done.

that we have less solid STEM education and college graduates, so we are no longer innovating as much but we are simply making things more efficient and making workers work harder...

he also mentioned that back then, NASA was funded well by the govt. These days, govt funding and investment in new science and technologies (ex. DARPA, NIH) and infrastructure (public transportation, new roads, bridge repair, etc) has decreased (prob because of the Bush and Reagan presidencies? idk). So we look old and are behind.

It makes sense once you know who serves on our House Science and Tech Committe

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rachel-maddow-slams-gop-house-science-committee-members-for-theories-like-dinosaur-farting/
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-slams-gop-candidates-how-do-these-fking-crazy-people-make-it-to-the-national-stage/

The waist this country has seen is unconscionable considering where it could have gotten us by now. Just the science expansion alone that would have come from that investment could have put us decades ahead of where we are. And what do we have to show for it by way of corporate control? iPads? Gees. We have toys! Lots of toys! Lots of overpriced practically useless toys! We have not had cable/satellite in our house for a couple of years now and my kids have not missed it for a minute. I have never even heard them complain about it. What do they do on their own for entertainment? They play in the park, play ball, ride bikes, read!!!, write stories, draw, build forts...

The toys may be fun once in a while, but if anyone really thinks through what we consider necessities these days, you can't say the "toys" that have replaced education and development are worth the loss.

most fundamental problems and reasons for our nation's decline over the last 30 - 40 years. We just don't strive to do great things anymore.

We're more concerned about making more billionaires that contribute nothing to the world, whereas we used to be about making the world better.

What the billionaires/millionaires do contribute is just a little of the fat off the edges of excess... and they think they are doing the world a favour. Did you read the article about the Koch threat to their employees? He threatens lay-offs if Obama is elected. So I guess these guys are contributing... what? I swear, it looks like we are entering an economic war where we have to choose between freedom and serfdom.

We will either meekly accept the yoke of servitude or we will go through another kind of hell to take our power back. I have a slim hope that another way to regain our freedom will be found, but history says that it is a forlorn hope.

Govt is evil. Until we replace them with people who believe Govt can be used as a force for good we'll just sit around and watch society/infrastructure crumble to dust.

Solar panels. Energy, too cheap to meter.

I have half a roof of those things I made from broken used cells I bought on the Internet. 1/3 of my house is wired 12V right now and the rest is supported by what's left over. I'm working for 90% 12V. Just thought I'd throw that in. Sorry, I'm posting outside my own OP.

12v is ok. But the loss of energy is great the further it travels. 120v via an inverter is the better way to go.

But this goes back to your op, this solar powered discussion. It is something, solar power is, that can transform this country. And you are in the game.

The costs we now incur getting electricity can for a large part be better used in making progress in all the other areas.

Last edited Sun Oct 14, 2012, 06:24 PM - Edit history (1)

My panel output during the day is actually 22VDC @ a pretty steady 15amps. I have an inverter for any left over power which I just dump into the grid as long as I don't use it when the grid is down; some poor linesman might get knocked off his ladder by my panels. But there are so many things we use or can use in our homes that run on some measure of DC power. Why take DC, convert it to AC, then back to DC? There is a lot more heat waste running it through a coil and throwing in a sine wave than just to keep it DC off the panel... IF you can. I have most of my house running LED clusters lights, and have home made circuit boards that control the usage of AC power. Several of my servers are running on DC that is split on 3, 5 and 12VDC rails. The distance issue is very small on a local scale. There is very little change within my house; running across the neighbourhood would be a different thing. There I go off OP again.

Concerning this post, there are so many things we take for granted. We don't have to follow a set pattern steeped in the status quo when, with a little ingenuity, we can find better cheaper more independent ways to exist outside the corporate stronghold. I try to do my part to be independent of the control mechanism as well as supporting the advancement human goals.

... my parents owned a house and a car, had excellent health insurance.

When my siblings and I went to college it was essentially free compared to what our kids now pay.

I graduated with zero loans.

What the hell happened?

We let the very wealthy put the screws on us. They got wealthier and bought our free press and politics.

It's past time to take our money, news media, and politics back.

"Trickle down economics" was bullshit from the beginning. The very wealthy sold the idea because they wanted the entire pie.

Like we did for 40+ years.

the people that those accomplishments directly threatened.

For a very brief time this nation was moving the whole world toward a future in which they were irrelevant. A world that had no place for despots, tyrants, and power brokers. A world in which a scientist created a cure (a cure, not treatment to make it chronic) for one of the most pernicious diseases we faced, and gave it away! "Would you patent the sun?"

A world that was shedding its fear. A world of plenty for all. A world in which nothing was impossible, nothing was unknowable or inexplicable, and if it ever seemed like it was, we would turn our efforts and our resources toward knowing and explaining it.

We still have more than enough money, knowledge, and skill to transform the world and to work to achieve whatever we want, but we have not rid ourselves of the parasites that profit from ignorance, deprivation, and superstition, and they use these fearsome tools against us. They use them to keep us dumb and jealous and to make too many of us believe that we still live in an age where scarcity was the rule and plenty was unheard of. They use those tools to make us believe that working your whole life to scratch out an existence is inevitable, and they reap the rewards of all of our labors.

people really consider: We "need" a lot more things than we did back then. That middle class/working class family that managed with just the dad working only had one car. A house with three bedrooms and one bathroom was typical. One, maybe two phones in the entire house. One television and in 1962 it was more likely black and white than color.

Fifty years later each driver in the household has a car. A lot of those cars are gas-guzzling SUVs. New homes are much larger than fifty years ago, with at least two bathrooms, often more. Everyone has a cell phone. Most people have multiple televisions, a computer, maybe several if laptops are involved, something that plays itunes, and oh, yes, we're all hooked up to the internet. Not to mention most people also have cable or satellite hook-up for their TVs. A huge percentage of meals are eaten out, which is vastly more expensive than cooking at home. And so on.

Yes, real wages have stagnated or even gone down. I do understand that. I'm currently living on less than I was a few years ago. One way I make do is that I don't often eat out, I happily drive an eight-year old car that gets 30+ mpg (and I know others of you drive even more fuel efficient vehicles). No TV. No cable or satellite. I do have a cell phone, but it's a very stupid phone, not a smart phone at all. So I'm not running up whatever bills others run up downloading aps. Unless most of them are free, in which case please excuse my ignorance. I do occasionally order books from Amazon, but nowadays I mostly check books out of the library. That e-reader (which I do understand is quite wonderful and many people love them) costs how much up front? And then you usually have to pay to download the book. Fifty years ago even voracious readers got books out of the library much of the time.

My point is, that there are so many more ways and places to spend our money that we often overlook. It's a vastly different world.

I am furious that the increase in productivity of workers in this country has not garnered an equal increase in wages. I'm appalled that the very rich pay a much lower effective tax rate than the poor and working class. Those inequities need to be fixed. But along the way, we need to remember how immensely different our day-to-day lives are a half century on.

I agree there is a lot more stuff these days and I have thought well about it. I just can't say there are necessities among most of those toys, that are worth the loss of education, scientific advancement, healthcare and more. I am also one who does without a lot of the extras, but to me, they are just extras the media and corporate greed mongers have convinced the masses they "just have to have". We don't need those things... certainly not considering the real cost. I really don't need Julienne fries or an iThing.

Whether with themselves, or with family members or whatever.

Because of changed financial circumstances, I almost never buy books anymore, and I have re-discovered the joys of the public library. It's great! When I moved 800 miles to start a new life after divorce some four years ago, I initially didn't buy a TV for the following reasons: 1. There was no good place to put one in the apartment I'd rented. 2. If I was going to have a TV I was going to have cable or satellite, and I felt I could not afford either of those. 3. I didn't want to spend the money on a TV in the first place.

I'd started out saying it was just an experiment, but now I can't imagine owning a TV again. I have the internet, and I subscribe to Netflix and Hulu Plus, but I already had the computer to watch stuff on, so I don't miss much. What's especially interesting is that whenever some important breaking news happens various networks or local TV stations will go to live streaming. I have the internet in all its glory.

The most important thing about not watching regular TV is that I almost never see commercials. So there are all sorts of products out there that I'm probably totally unaware of. When I stay in a motel when I travel, I'll turn on the TV and after maybe 30 minutes I'll turn it off because the commercials are making me crazy. The important thing here is that I don't get very many messages telling me to buy, telling me that my worth as a human depends on owning or consuming some particular product. One nice thing is that I do not feel very deprived, even though I'm living on less than I used to. So long as I still have the internet, all the embroidery projects I bought in years past, and books to read, I'm a rich woman!

FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, etc.. intelligent men that motivated people. And people trusted the government then. People trusted these men. Things started to go wrong starting with LBJ concerning Vietnam and then later with Nixon. A lot of anti-government talk picked up steam around this time. Today, our leaders are not trusted. The government is not trusted. Both parties are hated. Majority of voters are members of one party mainly because they hate the other party more.

And Congress doesn't represent the people anymore. More than half are millionaires. More than 2/3rds of Senators are millionaires. The average net worth of a member of Congress is about $750,000 and grew 5% during the recession. The average net worth of Americans is about $70,000...down 39% during the same period.

People view the government just as corrupt as any corporation. Whether the government runs things or corporations run things. It doesn't matter. America has become a plutocracy.

orgs like American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the National Consumers league, the Townsend movement.

It wasn't his great leadership that started those programs, it was the people who told them to do it or he wouldn't get a next term.

If we continue to sit around on our lazyboys and wait for so-called leaders to do it for us, we will have the economy we have today for the next couple decades. Or maybe it won't be this good...

And just so you know, "they" didn't trust government back then any more than "they" do now...not even close.

it's not because they're millionaires, it's because they don't want to represent us, or they can't. The system favours whoever is in the lobby and all it represents, and in a more grotesque way, it represents those who can take advantage of the PACs. The politicians who would be in the interests of the people have been bound at times to the game or they can't function, eg. Obama vs. congress. The machine of politics has gone out of control, and we have to pull it back at all cost. The fanatics know this and have started a fight against us using the tactics of spoiled brats.

When it's all over, there have to be some powerful penalties against those who have pulled us into these unfortunate times.

While no one denies that businesses need to turn a profit, government works best at doing the things that private enterprise cannot or will not do (i.e. are not profitable), like rural electrification, multi-purpose dams, the interstate highway system, etc. These were massive long-term projects that met clearly-defined needs and created vast economic opportunities and improvements in the quality of life for all. I think the space program falls into that category, too, and a national/universal health care system definitely would as well. But ever since the right wing labelled government as "bad" there's been a decades-long decline in government's ability to do what it is meant to do -- facilitate the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of its citizens. And make no mistake: the right hobbles government specifically so it can then claim that government is ineffective, as an excuse to shrink and de-fund it even further.

====================

is disastrous to freedom and the pursuit of happiness...

It wouldn't have happened without it. People would have come back from the war and returned to the lives they had before. The returning veterans were the first generation that were able to afford going to college because of the G.I. Bill. It was no longer just kids from rich families who went to college. That education created the middle class.

Government is vital to such things. Without it things that are greater than any one of us won't happen.

Think of EU, Japan, China, back then...

But even now, the country is still very great. Still very innovative. Still very advanced. The main thing most pundits are concerned is the wealth disparity, the rise of poverty and the slipping of the middle class.

Hope the next 4 years will improve on that.

Chemical , glass , textile , porcelain , steel ,

They were every where and most if not all were Union jobs.

A man could pay a mortgage , have a stay at home mom to raise children.
And live a middle class lifestyle.


Those jobs are gone now.

And now, we are almost $16 trillion dollars in debt. And what do we have to show for it? Where are all the huge social programs for the people, like we had up until 1980? The only liberal program I can recall for the people in the last 40 years, not counting ACA, was the Clinton program that permitted people to take off work to look after a sick child or parent without being fired. It really didn't cost that much. So where has all that money ($15 trillion) gone??

shacks in southern Louisiana, deteriorating row homes in St. Louis, anybody living who wasn't "white male"...

Why don't you just go back another decade to the 50s?

and you're right. But don't you think things got at least a little better up though the 70's? Where are we now? We are headed back to the worst of the days where racism and bigotry were the norm. I have no intention of saying that we need to go back to the way all things were back then. I am saying economics in general were better, we were moving away from racism, education was becoming a right of all people, and equality was the goal. Did we reach that goal... no, but things were at least headed in the correct direction.

Things are not heading in the correct direction now with corporate thugs in control. They would rather have people in those shacks, segregated into communities where they can be used for cheep labour or simply swept away into the corner to disappear.

That's one place I do not want us to return.

Even more racists percentage wise, but they kept their traps shut because they knew it wasn't "in fashion"...

Now since a lot of them are dying off we are really seeing the fringes fighting for their last White Protestant America hope. (for the first time Protestants are less than 50% of the population.)

Economically too, but I think the next four years under Obama will look like the first four years under Clinton.


Time will tell.

Ronnie Ray-Gun set the stage.. laid off Patco Workers and busted the Union. (no more decent wages or working conditions)

Bill Clinton signed the Republican NAFTA and Media De-regulation.. which allowed 3 major corporations to take over all TV, Radio and Newspaper. Thus, control all opinion via Fox News. Once NAFTA was signed.. the giant sucking sound of our jobs leaving was a reality.

Today, all politicians allow BILLIONS in Corporate welfare to Big Oil and Military, while denying even pathetic raises to workers.

Electric goes up, gas goes up, taxes go up, insurance goes up, food goes up, tuition goes up... yet politicians respond by installing red light cameras and speed traps to extract even more tribute from the brain-dead American public.

Obama signed a law (NDAA) that says you can be arrested by the military for no reason and be held indefinitely in a military jail with no lawyer and no hope of release. Obama also signed the Korean free-trade deals .. a nail in the coffin of NAFTA.

American workers (some of the most abused) are silent. Why?