1) Puh-leaze. The fact that things are truly hellish in Haiti in no way alters the fact that they are bad and getting worse here. And as for Mexico, it is enjoying precisely the sort of economic regimen which the current Administration and monied elites want for us. Stagnant job creation, a shrinking middle class, falling wages, government mostly as a tool for funnelling money from the many to the few. They are further along than us and are exporting their unemployment North of the border
3) Health care is a necessity, not a luxury despite what the government and the CEO of WalMart say. Housing, gasoline, health care and food are taking up a historically large and growing share of our income. The only way we finance that is through debt. Consider that something over half of all bankruptcies are the direct result of a catastrophic medical event. The standard Right Wing lie of "It's all because the Lower Orders don't have any morals or self-restraint" doesn't wash.
4) Consumerism has been the national religion, enforced by unremitting propaganda, government policy, economic priesthood and corporate screed. It is certainly destructive. But do you know what? It wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if we hadn't had decades of economic complacency followed by almost thirty years of the systematic destruction of family-wage jobs.
1.) I'm sorry that you feel things are bad for you in the USA. They're a lot better for me than they were for my parents. We'll just agree to disagree.
3.) I agree with you on the Health Care, that is a necessity (I just want the same Health Care coverage as my Congressman). I was referring more to housing and transportation. Food actually costs less than it used to.
Here's where I'm coming from:
"The average new home in 1970 took up less than 1,500 square feet. Today, new homes average more than 2,400 square feet, and there are fewer people living in them (about one person fewer, compared with the 1970s). Smaller homes cost less to buy, insure, heat, cool and maintain. Since the typical American household spent $15,167 on shelter and related costs in 2005, trimming even 10% of that bill would save you more than $1,500 a year. (If you could actually save a proportional amount -- 1970s homes were about 40% smaller -- that would be about $6,000 in savings.)"
'The 1973-74 oil crisis led to lines at the gas pumps and a new interest in fuel-efficient vehicles. But most households didn't have multiple tanks to fill. At the start of the 1970s, only 31% of households had more than one car, according to the U.S. Census Bureau; more than a quarter had no vehicles at all. By 1995, 60% of households had more than one car and only 8% were carless. The AAA tells us the average car costs about $7,800 a year to finance and operate, so one fewer vehicle could save you a tidy sum."
Food in general used to take up a lot more of our budgets. Food costs declined from 20.2% of the average family's expenditures in 1960 to 16.3% in 1972 to 12.8% in 2005. But even as food costs have dropped, the portion of our budgets we spend on eating out has grown considerably... ...Eating out just one less night a week could save a whopping $1,560 a year (and that's in today's dollars)."
We're living larger than ever and that's due to personal choice.
4.) Not quite sure of your point, so I'll just say that whether anyone (you, me, others) likes it or not, in a market economy, Capital and the employment associated with it, is going to flow to the most cost efficient producer.
