There is no doubt in my mind that we will never be a Communist country.

When they were trading, wasn't it illegal?

Isn't it funny that everyone I know doesn't feel fear of this administration. The only people I see with the gloom and doom are those who were not going to give Obama a chance anyway.

Is not speeding, murder, and theft illegal here? There are always going to be dissenters. These dissenters are the reason nothing will ever be 100%. Unfortunately, 99% or even 90% is plenty enough to do damage.




The same can be said about those blindly following Obama. I gave him a chance for the first few weeks. Then the "stimulus" bill passed. Then the appropriations bill with the earmarks was signed. Then The further bailouts of his major campaign contributors continued. The same political game that has crippled the government for generations.

I knew nothing would change other than the ideals and he proved me right. New face, same corruption, same greed, and same old game. There is no break-in period when every single decision you make has potentially worldwide consequences.

Well, according to the Mayan Calendar, we won't have to worry about anything after Dec. 2012....

Then it's a good thing that I'm not Mayan.

A peculiar quality of a socialism is that it is unable to provide for people's needs. There were flourishing black markets in Soviet Union, on which the essentials of everyone's life were traded.

I remember an estimate that about 50 to 70 percent (depending on the region) of all economic activity was taking place on the black markets.

That was the place (in many cases, the only place), where you could get things like soap, TP, clothes, food, autoparts.

This has a theoretical explanation, that was given (and predicted before it actually did happen), by Von Mises. He said that not one individual, nor an any quantity of individuals will ever be able to decide what needs to be produced, where it needs to be sold, and at what price.

He was correct. Of course, like in United States, in Soviet Union there were also price controls, both upward (on consumables), and downward floors (on labor). This meant that the economy regulators denied themselves the most important economic signal that tracks the quantity and the quality of demand, - price.

As we compare United States with Soviet Union, it is important to note that a price floor on labor, existing in U.S., has already given us most serious economic misalignment, which manifested itself in production flight to other nations.

I didn't realize the rate was so high. I have seen studies where the rate was around 20-25% but I'd imagined the rate would be higher than that.

+1 on the price floor bit. However, it's not the price floor itself that has brought about the migration of jobs but rather the greed at the bottom that used that floor as a starting point to get a "liveable" wage. Minimum wage often does not increase expenses to the point where it is cheaper to set up manufacturing facilities and ship goods in but when they tack on other things at those minimum wage jobs, that margin quickly diminishes.