Subject to debate of course, but having the second income is indeed the source of many of our economic problems. If we look at the skyrocketing housing costs of the past 30 years, the second income has been the cause of, not necessarilly the reaction to, those high costs. Let’s take housing as an example. It’s only with increased income that housing prices can rise. Suppose that each family with two working adults took one person out of the workplace. What would happen is, with reduced income, we would see housing prices go down sharply — similarly to what’s happened when credit dried up and unemployment increased. In other words, the market value of your home is not just what someone is willing to pay for it, but what they’re *able* to pay for it. The ridiculous rate of increase over the past years was clearly unsustainable, as income growth has not kept up at the same pace.

We now also have the growth of off-shore labor keeping domestic labor costs from growing. I work in information technology. In this decade my salary has not increased at the rate it did in the previous one.

Now let’s be clear about borrowing our way into the American Dream. Our government has been the most wreckless of the borrowers. Individuals have finally begun to increase their savings the past couple of years, realizing that borrowing and spending is dangerous. Our government keeps talking about reducing the deficit — but seriously, what about these ridiculous earmarks, and the special deals (i.e., Nebraska Medicaid) in the health reform legislation?

The Tea Party people basically believe that government is out of control with spending and future obligations. The debt is, what, $12 trillion these days? At what point would YOU say it’s at crisis levels? Let’s not eliminate regulation, but let’s realize that business — and yes, big, evil corporations — are the fuel for the economy, not an out of control congress ready to whip out the credit card.

I agree about strict term limits. Our congress is an absolute joke.

The problem is that banks lend out more money than they have. In it’s essence this is worse than counterfeiting. Not only does the artificially created money dilute the money that everybody has to earn, but then the society is gradually enslaved in ertsaze debt.

As a first step a supercharged Glass Stegal act needs to be implemented. The ultimate real regulation needs to be done. The banks need to be broken up into deposit institutions and investment institutions.

The deposit institutions will not be allowed to loan out anything. They will keep cash on hand and store and redistribute it for a modest fee.

The investment banks will be stripped of depositor insurance and all other guarantees. They willl attract investors by their investment skills, prudence, and transparancey, as desired by the investors.

The present system rests on the fraud of fractional reserve banking held together by the printing press behind it and the forced use of the banks fake money forced down the publicc’s throat by the legal tender laws.

I urge to read Murray Rothbard’s book, What has the Government done to our money. Students of Rothbard and the Austrian School of Economics understood the problem and urged reforms in some cases decades ago. Ron Paul accurately warned about Fannie Mae back in 2003 and even predicted the natural response. Obama has just given them a blank check for three years, no limit no kidding, and the CEO of Fannie just got a 6 mil pay check approved by the pay czar.

Ultimately fractional reserve banking needs to go, along with the Fed and the legal tender laws. Until then we are all prisoners of the financial military complex.

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much respect – partysteve

They aren’t journalists, they are “show biz” entertainers, similar to revival-show con artists.

The basic “trick” they play with just about every issue is to whip up the audience into believing they are victims of some wrong doing (usually on the part of the left). This is an incredibly effective tool when used with their prime audience consisting of the elderly (who never want anything to change), the poorly educated (who feel beaten down by life and are looking to blame someone), and the religious right.

Every position they take on every issue is geared towards supporting this goal and maintaining their wide audience and advertisers. Until people become better educated on the issues, this tactic will continue to work and gain them appeal.

In the mean time, I would say, sadly, it’s not easy to de-bunk the entertainment from the facts. After all, most of their audience believes that the earth is 6000 years old!