Going 'GREEN' is the new platitude.

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Tunnelcat
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Going 'GREEN' is the new platitude.

Post by Tunnelcat »

With Earth Day coming up, we are being bombarded with all this 'Green' B.S. that we are supposed to be doing. All of this is just crap to get us to feel good about our consumer-based society and to show us that corporations can be 'good guys'.

The same junk was shoved on us in the 1970's when Earth Day was started, but humans are still consuming resources at an alarming and unsustainable rate. No lesson learned then or now.

Look at the ethanol fuels that are being pushed on us. Instead of helping solve our dependence on crude oil, the reality is that fuel mileage goes down about 10% in most cars, so we end up using MORE gasoline in the long run. On top of that, in the U.S., ethanol is corn-based, so the price of food is drastically going up as well. Another good idea brought to you by the oil companies.

The CFL light bulbs that are being touted may use less power, but since they take a long time to warm up, most people will probably just leave them on longer out of frustration, thus using more electricity in the long run. But the hidden hazard is that the base electronics sometimes overheat, catch fire and break the bulb, resulting in a hazardous waste site in your own home! They contain mercury, which cannot be vacuumed up since it will spread vaporized mercury all around your home, not to mention the landfill when they are disposed of.

There are really only three good solutions to save our planet.

One, concerns world population limitation or reduction, the old 'ZPG' of the 1970's. If we don't control our own growth, nature or war will eventually do it for us, and not in a pleasant way. This is probably THE most important thing we can do to preserve our planet and species, but nobody even wants to talk about it.

Two, needs to be the drastic reduction in the burning of carbon-based fuels. There are better things to make from oil instead of gasoline.

Three, create true 'sustainability'. Get rid of the throw-away culture we've created and make products that can be maintained and repaired and reduce the product overload that is being thrust upon us. No more planned obsolescence and junk.

Does anybody think that these points are valid?
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Post by Duper »

personally, i'm not a big fan of florescent lighting. You get more than your fair share of UV light and as cataract is linked with excessive UV exposure, I'd rather money be spent in finding something different.
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Post by Tunnelcat »

LED lighting is looking good, but it's taking forever to get them out. I hear that California has LED light bulbs available.
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Post by Spidey »

Yes your points are valid, but I’m not a big subscriber to the “big corporations are evil” mantra.

My biggest beef with this issue is the dumb consumers, not the big evil corporations. I mean they seem to believe everything they hear, instead of checking things out for themselves.

Example: Electric cars will avoid pollution…wrong! Unless we start producing a much larger % of electricity with solar, wind or nuclear, last time I checked most electricity was produced with fossil fuels, and after you add in conversion losses it actually causes more pollution to use electric cars.

Not to say that corporations couldn’t do a lot more, but this a consumer driven economy, so we are the bottom line.

PS. High output LEDs can also produce UV, and I would bet dollars 2 donuts that the ones sold here will be produced in China. (read between the lines)
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Post by Duper »

\"fossil fuel\" is such a misnomer. but very good point. Energy comes from energy.
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Post by Spidey »

Ok fossil fuels means oil and coal in this case…sheesh I thought you were against splitting hairs.. :roll:
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Post by Dakatsu »

My family once wanted to put solar panels on the roof of our house, but it would of costed $20,000 dollars to put them on.

I think if money was not an issue, self-suffient solar panels would be the way to go!

Just random quote from Lewis Black: \"The reason we don't have solar energy is because the sun goes away each night, 'and it doesn't tell us where it's going!'\" :P

Another random thought, the Republican Jesus Ronald Reagan removed the solar panels from the White House, what a damn waste.
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Re: Going 'GREEN' is the new platitude.

Post by dissent »

tunnelcat wrote:There are really only three good solutions to save our planet.
umm, speaking of platitudes .....
I think that the planet Earth will still be getting on just fine, long after humans have gone extinct. The real issue is saving the planet in a state that we can live on it.
One, concerns world population limitation or reduction, the old 'ZPG' of the 1970's. If we don't control our own growth, nature or war will eventually do it for us, and not in a pleasant way. This is probably THE most important thing we can do to preserve our planet and species, but nobody even wants to talk about it.
OK, so who do we want to trust to "manage" the global population at a "sustainable" level?
Not a trivial question, IMHO.
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Post by Tunnelcat »

Managing global population is another can of worms, I don't have an answer for that. It's just that NOBODY is even discussing the population problem! It's like a forbidden subject. But you have to start somewhere. All we are hearing in the media is how we can do this or that and my point is that it's all just window dressing over the main problem, TOO MANY HUMANS and too few resources and it's only getting worse.

Yes, saving the planet is technically saving it in a decent state for ourselves, but isn't that what we want? People will skirt around the problem until it bites them in the ass! They keep buying from Wal Mart and looking for cheap products and don't really seem to care about what impact they are having. When something breaks, they throw it away and buy something else instead of fixing it, which can't be done presently since no corporation or customer is willing to foot the bill for making repairable or recyclable products.

It's going to cost money to be 'green', but all people want is a cheap fix. Corporations are not totally blameless either. They want to make a quick buck and are just as complicit in enabling the desire for cheap products that consumers think they need. So they advertise their products as a 'green' solution when this mentality is still part of the problem. :x
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Post by Will Robinson »

I'm going green too.
I just pulled the smog pump off my car, I figure the extra weight and parasitic load on the crankshaft was probably burning a few extra gallons of gas every year!

Since we don't have inspections here I figured taking that off and putting all the parts on the shelf beside the catalytic converters was the least I could do to increase my horsepower to weight ratio...err...no, I mean to conserve energy. ;)
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Post by Tunnelcat »

You have a car that has (had) a smog pump and it still runs? Those haven't been around for years. LOL

The tweakers are now resorting to stealing catalytic converters right from under your car while it's in your driveway in order to pay for meth. That'll give you some better gas mileage and a few noise complaints! :lol:
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Post by Krom »

The earth's current resources could easily support much more than its current population if properly managed. In human terms the earth is REALLY REALLY BIG, so unfathomably big that you really cant even imagine how big it is. Sure using coal and oil for fuel is bad, since they won't last forever and they have unwelcome side effects. And using food crops for fuel is also an extraordinarily bad idea (one more in a long line of ungenius we have politicians to thank for). But rather than spewing some halfassed nonsense from your energy guzzling computer about how people have to make some hard changes. Try to instead invest your time and effort or money you would have wasted on your electric bill into creating a way for companies to make money off of a true clean and reliable energy source. If you can do that, I guarantee they will take care of the rest.

You can also do other simple things to help, like keep your computer and monitors on a power strip, and turn off or unplug the strip when you are done since computers use standby power even when they aren't running. The same applies to your TV, your cellphone charger, even your microwave oven. Virtually everything that is plugged in will draw some energy, even when it is supposedly \"turned off\". Anything that can be turned on or off from a remote is drawing some standby power and you might be surprised at just how much. Also don't forget to turn off the lights when you don't need them. Take a good hard look at what *really* must be running all the time, with the exceptions of refrigerators/freezers/aquariums/smoke&carbon monoxide detectors/heating and cooling/etc you can probably disconnect a lot of \"vampire\" electronics from the wall when you aren't around or even when you are around. You can also look at getting stuff like an on demand water heater that doesn't waste huge amounts of energy keeping 40-60 gallons of water at 130 degrees all the time even when nobody is using it.

You could even do something to help like create a smart timers with motion sensors that people can put on their outlets that automatically cuts power to everything that is plugged in to it when you are at work or sleeping.

There are a lot of ways out there to save energy and resources that don't require hard or traumatic changes in lifestyle.
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Post by Dakatsu »

When I go to school, I turn off my lights and my two computers in my room, as well as my guitar amplifier, drumset, and TV. Hopefully that cuts down on power. I know my parents normally keep off the lights in their room. Don't know what happens when no one is home, as that never really happens :)

I feel eco-friendly, time to spew some smug!
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Post by Genghis »

As long as we're ranting, I'll complain about \"greenwashing\"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwash

I'm sick of companies, stores, products, etc. claiming to be \"green\" just as a marketing gimmick when in fact they're, well, not. If you trace products back to their roots and consider the manufacturing processes, the picture gets real ugly real fast.
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Post by Duper »

Spidey wrote:Ok fossil fuels means oil and coal in this case…sheesh I thought you were against splitting hairs.. :roll:
I'm not splitting hairs I simply think that the term is lame. Some coal is comprised of plant matter, but not all. And you'll never convince me that enough dinosaurs died in close proximity to form many MANY oil deposits who's singular volume is in the billions of gallons. That's just silly.

We've grown up with the term (it's been around since the late 60's) and have blindly accepted it.

None the less, excessive use is a bad thing. It's way past time to find something more efficient.

You're quite right Genghis. I've seen that where I work. We buy transformers from a company in VietNam and we need to let them air out for a couple of days as the fumes are horrid and would kill a horse. Yet, I believe they are labeled RoHS compliant. wooptydoo. :roll:

Krom. Excellent. I've heard a lot about electrical vampires here in Portland and I was looking around a couple of weeks back and I was amazed. There are a LOT!

Go back to windup alarm clocks. Microwaves. Use lower wattage light bulbs. ...do you REALLY need 3 60watt bulbs burning at one time in the bathroom? go get 3 40 watters. Small things like that.

Just for fun, turn off all the lights and tv (don't unplug) and go checkout your energy meter outside. I should still be moving. The only thing that needs to be "on" is the Fidge and hot water heater. (and clocks, but I addressed that already) :)
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Post by dissent »

Soylent Green ...... is PEOPLE !!!!

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Post by Will Robinson »

tunnelcat wrote:You have a car that has (had) a smog pump and it still runs? Those haven't been around for years. LOL...
It's been running since 1988...and it'll still do just shy of 200mph!!
Anyone want to sell me some carbon credits?
Gotta love that whole scam!!
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Will Robinson wrote:Anyone want to sell me some carbon credits?
I will sell you carbon credits! You'll find my prices very reasonable.
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Post by roid »

what's wrong with carbon credits/trading? They are a perfect way to put the TRUE cost of greenhouse gas emissions onto our wallets, so we'll do something about it.


i've been tossing up the idea of starting up a small algae carbon-offset business.

I'll set up CO2 emitting small businesses with small algae photobioreactors, so they can re-capture all of their own emissions directly.

Then they (or just me) can burn the dried algae in a gasifier stove powered generator, and repipe the emissions back into the algae photobioreactor. This way we get pure solid carbon (which i assume is stable and won't re-emitt) - which can be used as biochar.

It's basically a way to turn CO2 emissions into solid carbon. Eventually i hope for the algae growing/harvesting/drying/burning process to be as simple and automated as a household coffee machine.

I could buyout carbon-offset tree plantations, absorb the equivalent CO2 with my photobioreactors much faster than the trees would have over their lifetimes, then resell the land. We're probably soon going to reforrest the whole world at the rate we're currently planting carbon-offset trees, it's a bad idea i think, forrests take too much space!
haha, some greeny i am.

That's my big idea
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Post by Will Robinson »

roid wrote:what's wrong with carbon credits/trading?..
Probably nothing wrong with the premise but plenty wrong with the implementation and 'regulation'...
The fox isn't guarding the henhouse, he merely pays someone to pretend to be guarding it.

It's an easy way for the most powerful and wealthy polluters to buy their way out of having to conform meanwhile the global environmental movement, if left unchecked, will pass along all sorts of carbon taxes and regulations that us little people can't afford to pay.

We have a similar thing here, the state declares a citizens property a "wetland" so the citizen can't build on it, he sells it cheap to a powerful developer who makes a deal with the state to protect some swamp somewhere in the country where the land has no development value (read: dirt cheap) and in return for not building on the other wetland he's allowed to develop the lot he bought cheap and sell it for millions.
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Post by TIGERassault »

I'm in very much a nihilistic mood today, so I don't think you want to know my preferred plan to help the environment...
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Post by Duper »

I have to agree with Will here. We, as consumers, are bound by what we use by what is marketed. (on the whole)

There are things we can do around the house as posted earlier, but where cars and other large things, the average Joe is kinda stuck.
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Post by Herculosis »

Will Robinson wrote:...and it'll still do just shy of 200mph!!
And I suppose you're out there smokin' the tires every chance you get too!! Think of the pollution. Shameful, just shameful! :D
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Post by Krom »

Duper wrote:There are things we can do around the house as posted earlier, but where cars and other large things, the average Joe is kinda stuck.
While it doesn't make a huge difference in the long run, accelerate more gently and drive at the actual speed limit. It doesn't make that huge of a difference in fuel mileage in the end (unless you really drove like a nut), but it does take some stress out of driving. :P
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Post by Spidey »

I say don’t sweat the small stuff, isn’t life stressful enough, then having to worry if every little light in your house is off or not. (bad grammar I know)

Just do the large things like recycling & not driving to the corner store…etc

Make a contribution, that’s all that counts…you can’t save every single little kilowatt.
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Post by Tunnelcat »

Yes, I keep hearing the media telling people to slow down in their cars, but it ain't happening very fast. Except for the long-haul truckers recently, I've noticed most people are still leadfoots. I've always tried to keep to the speed limit or slightly below (which really pisses people off), and gives me endless satisfaction. LOL jerks!

How much will the price of gasoline have to go up before people slow down and get rid of their gas-guzzling SUV's? 5$, 10$ a gallon?

Krom, your idea of turning off vampire power sources is fine except for newer TV's, and the cable company's DVR. If you unplug these items, you lose channel memory on the TV and you can't record or download programs to the DVR, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a DVR. Most everything else I unplug, except for a couple of clocks.

As for computers, I still own every computer I've ever bought (5) and three of them are still in use. They are finally starting to recycle old computers here, so I can probably get rid of two dead ones.

I also built a house that has very thick insulated walls and ceilings, so my energy bills are very low. What else can you do? 8)
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Post by Ford Prefect »

My own company generated the perfect \"how to get people to reduce energy usage\" scenario. We built a new factory in Ontario. I designed the HVAC control system and networked the controls so that the system could be tuned and tweaked to reduce it's energy consumption. I went out to check out the system when the building was not quite finished and got the system more or less running. When I called 6 months later to check if all the tuning had been done I was told everything was great, they hadn't bothered with all that fussing around because their nat. gas consumption was half what it was in the old building. That was impossible since the new one was twice as large and comfortable but my protests went ignored until six months after that when the utility figured out that they had misplaced a decimal when they programmed the gas meter and we owed them $125,000 for gas used but not paid for in the last year.
It was amazing how quickly the designed systems were instituted and tweaked for max. energy savings. (40% reduction realized)
When gas hits $10 a gallon and utility charges triple people will line up to buy energy saving technologies. But not until then.
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TIGERassault wrote:I'm in very much a nihilistic mood today, so I don't think you want to know my preferred plan to help the environment...
Ever read Rainbow Six, by Tom Clancy?

I'm still convinced that the future is in fusion power, if we can get it working.
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Post by Tunnelcat »

The only problem with fusion is when things go wrong, it BLOWS UP, BIG, THERMONUCLEAR HYDROGEN BOMB type, not just a piddly melt down. But it would be a clean power source if ever harnessed.

Still, no one is talking about the touchy subject concerning population control of the human species as an option for our food and energy woes. I was just watching the national news and apparently rice is in very short supply in Asia. Food riots are breaking out and exports are now being limited from many countries since they don't have enough rice supplies for their own people.

There have also been food riots in Africa and Egypt as well. People don't seem realize that for the standard of living to go up in third world countries, it will have to go down in most of the developed countries. We can't all use the earth's resources at the present rate the U.S. and Europe does. :(
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Post by Ford Prefect »

Yes rice is in short supply in Asia and the price has risen over 65%. That is long grain rice is in short supply. Medium and short grain rice, mostly grown in less tropical areas such as the U.S. has only gone up 20% and is plentiful. But long grain rice is the type preferred in Asia and so the demand raises the price. There is not yet an actual shortage of food in anywhere other than North Korea and that is nothing to do with agriculture.
It was said that the world can support many more people than live on it now by just changing the way people eat. Less meat and more grains and vegetables. People hate change but it is coming big time in the next few decades.
China has a very personally invasive political structure and even then their \"one child\" policy has been difficult to impossible to enforce and a limited success. There is just no way to force the people in a reasonably \"free\" country to reduce their family size, particularly if there is a real economic benefit to a large family. Drakona in one post pointed out that the size of family is inversely proportional to their income. Children are a net economic benefit if you are poor and a net cost if you are rich. The best way to limit population growth is to raise the standard of living in poor countries so large families are no longer needed. Good luck with that by the way.
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Post by Tunnelcat »

The standard of living is rising right now in a lot of third world countries. The standard of living is going up and industrialization is occuring, which benifits them. But on the flip side you'll see the standard of living for the U.S. and Europe begin to drop as time goes on. Americans won't like that, will they?

Jobs are already being moved to third world countries, in the name of globalization, that were formerly done by U.S. workers, who can't find jobs that pay as well. There are always countries that have a willing supply of workers that will work for less pay for the multinational corporations.

All the people in the world cannot live at the high standard of living that we have in the U.S. There just aren't enough resources, clean air or water for all of us to be industrialized across the entire planet with the present world population, despite what people think.

We can keep breeding like mice and eventually fall victim to starvation or war when things run out and the land can no longer produce enough food, or make the hard choice worldwide of controling the size of our families so that everybody can have a good standard of living. But I don't see people coming together to solve this problem. They all want a quick technological fix.

This may sound like Communism to some people, but this is just an emotional response that people use to deny the real problem of how do we fairly allocate limited resources. Even if the population were to stay the same or go down, allocation of limited resources would still an issue for any political system.
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Post by Dakatsu »

snoopy wrote:
TIGERassault wrote:I'm in very much a nihilistic mood today, so I don't think you want to know my preferred plan to help the environment...
Ever read Rainbow Six, by Tom Clancy?

I'm still convinced that the future is in fusion power, if we can get it working.
The Descent games have shown fusion is the way to go :P
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Post by Spidey »

tunnelcat wrote:The standard of living is rising right now in a lot of third world countries. The standard of living is going up and industrialization is occuring, which benifits them. But on the flip side you'll see the standard of living for the U.S. and Europe begin to drop as time goes on. Americans won't like that, will they?
I don’t believe that “has” to happen for one minute, but I believe we may “let” that happen.

And no we wont like that, wth is that supposed to mean?
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Post by Tunnelcat »

Hypothetically Spidey, would you be willing to lower your standard of living so that another could live in a higher standard of living? Many Americans like their houses, cars and toys and wouldn't want to give them up.
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Post by Spidey »

Hypothetically or otherwise…

No, I wouldn’t, and I don’t think we have to lower our standard of living to raise theirs. That’s like saying I have to give up my car so my neighbor can have one.
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Post by Ford Prefect »

Spidey the U.S. consumes many times the goods/resources it produces. In order to support it's current lifestyle those goods/resources must be imported at cheap prices. As long as the U.S. was the prime market for those goods/resources and could export technology to match then the cost was relatively cheap and the living was easy. Now no one wants or needs what the U.S. produces and there are other countries that have the demand for the goods/resources and the means to pay for them as they have much better balance sheets, both in terms of budget deficit and net export balance. As demand rises so does cost and there goes the comfy lifestyle. Especially when your currency become so debt laden that it is a blight on the market.
Keeping in mind that higher taxes are not an option in the U.S. political system and you have been running a budget deficit in the hundreds of billions so you have an enormous debt to service and have a trade deficit of hundreds of billions so your money is in over supply. How do you propose your country not \"let it happen\"?
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Post by Duper »

He didn't say he wouldn't reduce or moderate his intake/output. He wasn't going to give up his car or house.

Humans have impact. ANYTHING enmass has impact. Checkout what a virus does to your body when you get sick. ;p

Americans can moderate their consumption simply by going back to actually PREPARING THEIR MEALS THEMSELVES. O.M.G! my daughter and her ..whatever.. eats nearly nothing but frozen boxed ★■◆●. I have to take out the garbage 3 times a week! That's just STUPID! and the sad thing is that many MANY Americans eat like that and most of that crap is NOT recyclable.

Americans don't need to go back to living in freekin Mud huts on the prairie and walk everywhere, they just need to go buy some common sense about what they are buying and using.
Krom made some excellent suggestions. Things I've known about and done for years! You would be amazed at how much you save just by those small little changes.

..ok .. I'm done. ^^
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Post by Spidey »

Heh

Ford…

The comfy lifestyle as you put it has nothing to do with cheap consumer goods, only the poor need cheap goods.

As far as keeping the high living standard we enjoy now, I admit it will be a challenge in the future, but not impossible, with a little Yankee ingenuity we always get by.

I get the feeling that you and other people want to see this country go into the crapper, and you know what…you just might get your wish. But you will prolly go out the same drain we do…

The future of this country is in doubt, I agree with that, especially with all this communist BS I hear lately…no wait…I’ve been hearing it since forever. And if we keep dumbing down our kids in this liberal indoctrination warehouse system (Public School) we will be in for the flush.
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Spidey
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Post by Spidey »

Oh, something I forgot to mention…one of the flies in your doomsday theory:

In order to raise the living standards of people in other countries, you are going to have to raise their pay, thus raising the price of the goods produced, the end result is the leveling of the playing field making American goods viable again. If you don’t raise the pay of millions of people your rise in their living standards theory can never happen, and so far has only happened for a relative few.

Where will all those hoards of cheap laborers come from when “they” enjoy a higher standard of living?

Has already happened in Japan.
Ford Prefect
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Post by Ford Prefect »

Step one denial:
The comfy lifestyle as you put it has nothing to do with cheap consumer goods, only the poor need cheap goods.
Total BS Spidey check out some basic economics.

Step two blame others:
The future of this country is in doubt, I agree with that, especially with all this communist BS I hear lately…no wait…I’ve been hearing it since forever. And if we keep dumbing down our kids in this liberal indoctrination warehouse system (Public School) we will be in for the flush.
Right. :roll: Not your (as a consumer) fault. Not the successive deficits run up by Republican politician fault. Oh no must be those \"Liberals\"

Step three Obsfucation;
In order to raise the living standards of people in other countries, you are going to have to raise their pay, thus raising the price of the goods produced, the end result is the leveling of the playing field making American goods viable again. If you don’t raise the pay of millions of people your rise in their living standards theory can never happen, and so far has only happened for a relative few.
Where do I talk about that? I was describing your countries economic statistics. When your dollar is only good for wallpaper you can't buy stuff on the open market unless you hand out fistfuls of it.

The truth:
But you will prolly go out the same drain we do…
The company I work for here in Canada sells 80% of our product (high quality, custom, HVAC units) into the U.S. but only 45% of our production is there. You guys tank and I'm selling pencils on the street in a week. Pull it together will you.
Clothes may make the man
But all a girl needs is a tan

-The Producers
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