10 US industries that may never recover. What would you do to rebuild the economy?

So if we can just stop all Government spending too, everything will balance.

We can become like the libertarian paradise of Somalia. Woo hoo! No government! Freedom!

But seriously, we should be working to become the world leader in clean alternatives to petroleum. Instead of exporting our cash to feudal theocracies and fighting endless wars to control oil lands.

Large-scale US solar and wind projects are using Chines hardware. We are losing the first big economic contest of the 21st century.

I really think we’re chasing a ghost. There will be no recovery. Our current situation is a reality check. We just caught up with the rest of the world.

How long do Americans think they can buy everything they own from third world labor and not deal with the consequences of doing so?

There will soon emerge a homegrown American worker that will gladly take all those crap jobs we now reserve for illegal immigrants. They won’t claim that it is beneath them. They will live 3 families to one household.

Our sense of entitlement, over zealous consumerism, fast/now/easy mentality, all at the expense of loosing industry to cheap child labor making our fancy Nike shoes has finally caught up with us. Welcome to the new America.

Unfortunately, no politician is going to tell anyone the truth. We still vote for the biggest daydream and wide eyed ideology. We can’t stomach the truth in this country. That’s why Ron Paul was mocked right out of the election in favor of the Huckabee’s and McCain’s.

It’s just sickening. You want to know how to fix this nation? Search for Ron Paul on YouTube and listen to every single word that came out of his mouth years ago and tell me he wasn’t a prophet sent from above. But we didn’t like what he had to say back then.

Ron has wanted to abolish the IRS and audit the fed for years. That would be a great start if we could find half a testicle anywhere in Washington.

Alas, CJ Chesterton prophecy has born true. We have become Men without chests.

An Idea. Put money together to make US households energy independent with US made Solar Panels, Wind turbines, and Geothermal Heating systems. The money could be raised through low interest loans or tax credits. So the middle class will free up 4 to 500 dollars a month. That could have a stimulative effect on the economy in many ways.

a new manufacturing sector
Jobs
Money flowing back into the economy,
energy indepence from foriegn oil.
Less need to burn coal.
more money for homeowners

Most of this could probably be offset with the carbon tax in a cap and trade program.

I can’t help but feel that the premise of the article is a bit alarmist. Hell, if we’ve managed to prop up the rail industry for a centruy after it turned its last profit we can keep the American auto-manufacturing business afloat.

The problem is not that we squabble, its that when we squabble we let everyone in. The whole Tea-Party platform seems to be “if you don’t know the first damn thing about economics, are ideas make sense”. Why should the media pay attention to such blatantly falsifiable claims?

Claiming on the one hand that you want a balanced budget and on the other hand that you want to radically decrease revenues? No problem, Glenn Beck will give you 10 minutes.

I wonder what it would be like if you invited the Tea-Party to a board meeting with a fortune 500 company. Sales are lagging and everyone is trying to figure out how to boost them. The Tea Party solution, of course, is to lower prices and not invest as much as one penny in growing the business. “Borrow money in order to make money?” they would laugh “Spend money to improve our productivity and thus our profits?” they would scoff.

So what would I do to rebuild the economy? Keep these freaking Tea Partiers the hell away from my economy. (C’mon liberals. Midterms are right around the corner!)

@jaytkay Amen to that.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Call me a dreamer but I’m not willing to call America dead or third-world alive. I can’t see how abolishing the IRS will pay off 13 trillion in debt unless Paul plans to renege on the National Debt and face the consequences. But a good deal of what you say is spot on. We have to wake up and face the cost of the decisions we have been making for the last 30 years or more. It’s going to take some time to set this right.

@thekoukoureport I am convinced that a real turnaround could come form our leading the world in making and selling renewable energy technology. Right now, China is nivesting very heavily in being the world leader in that sector. And we have right-wingers who hurl expletives at anyone who dares not drive a 600 HP Diesel crew cab truck to run to the Mall and back.

@crazyivan I don’t think it absolutely has to shake out like the article says. But unless we do something seriously different that where we are heading now, and certainly where Republican speaker Boehner would take us, that article is painting a rosy picture. What puzzles me is why the Chamber of Commerce and the Corporatists still support the prosperity through doing nothing set. Lord knows, US business is hurting from just that.

It’s all a matter of mortgaging the future for the sake of today…

@crazyivan That’s not how it worked out in the Great Depression. Hoover first tried the austerity campaign to “restore confidence” in the financial system. That resulted in the failure of our entire banking system, the unemployment spiking up to 25%, and the GDP tanking by 40%. FDR took over in 1933 and began a massive spending campaign that had the GDP back to where it should have risen by early 1941. That would be before Pearl Harbor, which was December 7, 1941.

The spending to get out of the Great Depression and then war spending to fight WWII drove the National Debt to 120% of GDP. But by the 1060s, we had it paid back down to an acceptable level and Kennedy cut taxes (Johnson survived him to actually sign that tax cut into law).

@ETpro reread the post I was responding to. I agree that spending is the only proven way out of a mess like this. I was responding to references to tax cuts. Investment is the only way to grow a business (or a country), but cutting revenues is not.

@crazyivan Aha. You are quite right. In bad economic times, if you give people tax cuts,they either pay down debt with it or save it. Fear of spending is what starts the downward spiral of recessions. Tax cuts give the least stimulus and are the hardest type of stimulus to end when the recession turns around. And worse, they starve the revenue stream to government, making it ever more costly to do the spending that will turn things around. All the borrowing for the tax cuts and the spending has to go straight to long-term debt.