US GNP

[rlortie]

Winkle and Ovyyus,

I do believe you both have missed my point! My reply was aimed at Winkle and his remark about the rich sitting on their butt talking crap! One does not get rich sitting on their butt unless they are darn good investors or inherit it.

Yes I believe in sharing, and yes I pay taxes, and yes I draw a pension, and yes I paid into that pension. The money I receive is out of my own account that is drawing interest while some one else is using the capital to earn more money for themselves.

As previously stated, I have opened my house to students who were once under communist regime. They lived with me for 10 months and ate my food, slept under my roof and my wife did their laundry. For this. we received nothing but admiration and some true friends who only wished to see how our education and political system worked.

Sharing is also learning their way of life and native traditions. I have never felt the joy of sharing more than watching a 16 year old from Uzbekistan being handed a high School diploma and then putting him on a plane for home!

I share with every member on this board and more so for those who submit a viable plan and wish for me to build it, providing it looks to me that it might work. For this I have never charged a dime! Yet I have thousands of US dollars wrapped up in tooling and materials. If you recall even John Collins was referred to me.

The rich pay taxes and the welfare lines get longer, people capable of earning a living for themselves. Not only do they get food stamps and free medical but they also get a low income tax credit for money they did not earn or pay taxes on.

And do not forget the state and federal employee cost that it takes to administer these welfare programs. I do not mind sharing, but not with those who are to damn lazy or on drugs to earn a living for themselves.

This thread is about GNP and I would say that welfare services puts a pretty good size dent in it.

Ralph

[ovyyus]

I don't think I missed your point Ralph. I agree that 'the rich' rarely get that way through lazyness.

However, I think that getting picky about who is or is not worthy of our help or charity is generally a mistake. IMO, unemployment and substance abuse (to name just two) are evidence of weaknesses in our social structure (all of us) which will never be effectively addressed through selective starvation, neglect and harsh punishment.

[Jim Williams]

The US has 25% of the World's total GNP (source www.worldbank.com ), for our 4.8% of the World's population. Yet we seem to spend more on our own services than we generate from our own productivity. It seems to me that not only do we have such a hugh share of the world for our own use, but we are dependent on the rest of the world to keep us afloat at the same time. That's where I hope my understanding of economics is wrong.

I went to a school that taught both English and French in the first grade at the same time. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

By the way US Patent 4718232 looks good to me.

[Wheeler]

Thanks Bill
Give them opportunity and they will bloom..
I think 90% of us want the opportunity to work and have something solid we can build our life around.

Who was it that said.

For awhile in the world some are fat
For awhile in the world some are hungry?

[Wheeler]

Jim
US Patent 4718232 looks like many that have been posted on Bessler Wheel.com
Thanks for the link.

[winkle]

Winkle and Ovyyus,
I share with every member on this board and more so for those who submit a viable plan and wish for me to build it, providing it looks to me that it might work. For this I have never charged a dime! Yet I have thousands of US dollars wrapped up in tooling and materials. If you recall even John Collins was referred to me.
Ralph

well it's hard to charge a man for what you chose to do

he most likely would not pay much to have you puttering around on a nonworking wheel anyway

i also understand you expect to make your profit as you have said in the past from the one guy that has a working wheel that you tinker with

if that one comes along he will pickup the tab for all of the free work you spoke of above

as i recall you have said more than once if anyone has a working wheel that you have messed with you expect a nice big cut

so all that free you speak of above is just till you can cut your self in on someone else idea

perhaps the army should be disbanded and you could save some tax money and be allowed to defend your own fortune
so the less well off don't have to pay and die on your behalf
are mabe there could be an army with just rich guys in it sense they have the most to loose

Ralph i don't have a problem with you at all i just disagree with you

a good person will have their praises sung by other folks they don't have to sing their own

all i'm saying is just watch out for wolfs in dead sheep skins:)

have a nice day

[Jim Williams]

I didn't include welfare as it wasn't reflected in the BEA figures I found. Somehow I would guess welfare isn't considered as part of the GNP. What I am arguing that in terms of what is generated by the economy vs what is dependent on that same economy that both services and welfare are equally as dependent. But like good and bad colostral, there is good dependence and bad dependence.

I should talk so much, I live on interest and dividends generated from a trust from a small town in Missouri, although the amounts total below the poverty line. I live a welfare life, it's just a rich form of welfare as opposed to a poor form. I benefited from Bush's tax breaks, but I can't afford my own computer. I have about twenty new inventions and hope one is good enough to earn royalties, because that would mean I'm creating new productive jobs. Actually Ive worked my entire life, but in service mostly and I'm attempting to live up to what I see for the US by creating more productivity. With my luck, I'll probably create something manufactured by outsourcing to the Chinese.

[Jim Williams]

I look at the difference between how much we spend on our own goods, ( durable and non durable), and our services and note we spend $5000 per American more on our services per year than on our goods, as previously noted. I further looked at Table 1.5.5 from www.bea.gov which has a more detailed breakdown between goods and services to note medical care is one of the largest services. We spend more a year on medical services alone than we spend each year on either housing or all of our durable goods by themselves.

I remember living in Fascist Spain which had socialized medicine in a system that was almost identical to our education system. Medical care was available to all Spainish on a sliding fee scale. It's just that 90% of the population fell below income levels in which they had to pay anything. Doctors were paid much like our educators are paid here. Perhaps to a Libertarian like scott a public health system would falter much like our public education appears to be failing here. All I'm saying is along with increasing our productivity to pay for services, we should concider nationalizing health care like the rest of the civilized world. When it come down to it, I think a right to heal a broken bone comes before a right to learn algebra.

Thanks Wheeler

[scott]

Here is your answer Jim:

Energy

Cóilín Nunan: Oil, Currency, and the War on Iraq

It will not come as news to anyone that the US dominates the world economically and militarily. But the exact mechanisms by which American hegemony has been established and maintained are perhaps less well understood than they might be. One tool used to great effect has been the dollar, but its efficacy has recently been under threat since Europe introduced the euro.

The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than fourfifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all world exports are denominated in dollars. In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.

But the more dollars there are circulating outside the US, or invested by foreign owners in American assets, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars. The dollars cost the US next to nothing to produce, so the fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free.

Since so many foreign-owned dollars are not spent on American goods and services, the US is able to run a huge trade deficit year after year without apparently any major economic consequences. The most recently published figures, for example, show that in November of last year US imports were worth 48% more than US exports. No other country can run such a large trade deficit with impunity. The financial media tell us the US is acting as the 'consumer of last resort' and the implication is that we should be thankful, but a more enlightening description of this state of affairs would be to say that it is getting a massive interest-free loan from the rest of the world.

While the US' position may seem inviolable, one should remember that the more you have, the more you have to lose. And recently there have been signs of how, for the first time in a long time, the US may be beginning to lose.

One of the stated economic objectives, and perhaps the primary objective, when setting up the euro was to turn it into a reserve currency to challenge the dollar so that Europe too could get something for nothing.

This however would be a disaster for the US. Not only would they lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but countries switching to euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the US currency. Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more and as increasing numbers of those holding dollars began to spend them, the US would have to start paying its debts by supplying in goods and services to foreign countries, thus reducing American living standards. As countries and businesses converted their dollar assets into euro assets, the US property and stock market bubbles would, without doubt, burst. The Federal Reserve would no longer be able to print more money to reflate the bubble, as it is currently openly considering doing, because, without lots of eager foreigners prepared to mop them up, a serious inflation would result which, in turn, would make foreigners even more reluctant to hold the US currency and thus heighten the crisis.

There is though one major obstacle to this happening: oil. Oil is not just by far the most important commodity traded internationally, it is the lifeblood of all modern industrialised economies. If you don't have oil, you have to buy it. And if you want to buy oil on the international markets, you usually have to have dollars. Until recently all OPEC countries agreed to sell their oil for dollars only. So long as this remained the case, the euro was unlikely to become the major reserve currency: there is not a lot of point in stockpiling euros if every time you need to buy oil you have to change them into dollars. This arrangement also meant that the US effectively part-controlled the entire world oil market: you could only buy oil if you had dollars, and only one country had the right to print dollars - the US.

If on the other hand OPEC were to decide to accept euros only for its oil (assuming for a moment it were allowed to make this decision), then American economic dominance would be over. Not only would Europe not need as many dollars anymore, but Japan which imports over 80% of its oil from the Middle East would think it wise to convert a large portion of its dollar assets to euro assets (Japan is the major subsidiser of the US because it holds so many dollar investments). The US on the other hand, being the world's largest oil importer would have to run a trade surplus to acquire euros. The conversion from trade deficit to trade surplus would have to be achieved at a time when its property and stock market prices were collapsing and its domestic supplies of oil and gas were contracting. It would be a very painful conversion.

The purely economic arguments for OPEC converting to the euro, at least for a while, seem very strong. The Euro-zone does not run a huge trade deficit nor is it heavily endebted to the rest of the world like the US and interest rates in the Euro-zone are also significantly higher. The Euro-zone has a larger share of world trade than the US and is the Middle East's main trading partner. And nearly everything you can buy for dollars you can also buy for euros - apart, of course, from oil. Furthermore, if OPEC were to convert their dollar assets to euro assets and then require payment for oil in Euros, their assets would immediately increase in value, since oil importing countries would be forced to also convert part of their assets, driving the prices up. For OPEC, backing the euro would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. They could then at some later date move to some other currency, perhaps back to the dollar, and again make huge profits.

But of course it is not a purely economic decision.

So far only one OPEC country has dared switch to the euro: Iraq, in November 2002. There is little doubt that this was a deliberate attempt by Saddam to strike back at the US, but in economic terms it has also turned out to have been a huge success: at the time of Iraq's conversion the euro was worth around 83 US cents but it is now worth over $1.05. There may however be other consequences to this decision.

One other OPEC country has been talking publicly about possible conversion to the euro since 1999: Iran, a country which has since been included in the George W. Bush's 'axis of evil'.
[...]
As oil production is now in decline in most oil producing countries, the importance of the remaining large oil producers, particularly those of the Middle East, is going to grow and grow in years to come.

Iraq, whose oil production has been severely curtailed by sanctions, is one of a very small number of countries which can help ease this looming oil shortage. Europe, like most of the rest of the world, wishes to see a peaceful resolution of the current US-Iraqi tensions and a gradual lifting of the sanctions - this would certainly serve its interests best. But as Iraqi oil is denominated in euros, allowing it to become more widely available at present could loosen the dollar stranglehold and possibly do more damage than good to US economic health.

All of this is bad news for the US economy and the dollar. The fear for Washington will be that not only will the future price of oil not be right, but the currency might not be right either. Which perhaps helps explain why the US is increasingly turning to its second major tool for dominating world affairs: military force.

http://www.feasta.org/documents/papers/oil1.htm

[Jim Williams]

Thanks Scott for the article. Two headlines I'm not looking forward to seeing, "OPEC Drops Dollar, Adds Euro" and "Euro Adopts "Oil Standard".

The article does explain both how we can currently operate with such an imbalance between our productivity and services and how we can continue to have such a trade deficit. Also how we are living on borrowed time.

My own projection for the US looks something like this. I note not only are we generating more services than our productivity generates with which to pay, but we are spending money we don't have for these services on ourselves, rather than exporting them. Perhaps we have a future where our export of services and agriculture will begin to displace what had been our export of manufactured goods. Our import of goods is the single largest factor in our deficit.

The biggest reserve of untouched natural resources is in Russia (Siberia), which is right next to China, which appears to be moving effectively to taking over the productivity we once had. China has right next to it the resources to sustain a productivity for quite a time into the future. As our own natural resouces continue to be depleted, it may occur our services will be all we have left to export. They seem to be good enough for Americans to buy, why not the rest of the world? Information is one of those services at which we remain the best and should be exportable I would think.

I think Bush has got the right idea, but has it backwards. Instead of exporting services, he is exporting democracy to Iraq by men in military service, while Americans are gobbling up our "good" services. We should be exporting the same we have for ourselves, not our military version of service we have of it for "them".

I think all the world is going to need say to us, "Just don't need the service." and this country is in deep doodoo. I have the time. I'll continue to attempt to contribute to the economy before being dependent on it.

[Jim Williams]

Another Patent No 7,134,283 available with the search engine esp@cenet at www.european-patent-office.org. I use esp@cenet because it uses Adobe for images and can be easier than TIFF used by USPTO.

I am amazed so many patents reference the Diamond and Kusmer patents. Maybe USPTO and these inventors know something I don't.

[Jim Williams]

I forgot Scott's post of http://www.google.com/patents for American patents. Works very well.

[Jim Williams]

Pat No 7,134,283 doesn't show up on Google yet, but does show up through the European Patent Office