I hate it when people tell me Obama is going to fix the economy
I hate it when people tell me Romney would have fixed the economy
I hate it when people tell me A single person can fix the economy

It's a lie that any single person can fix the economy. The ability to fix the economy lies within the populous, and what they do.

The death of an economy is not caused by big business, not a large government. It is caused by the populous and what they do.

Why is the economy bad, you ask? What caused it? Lack of confidence in the economy (caused by the media, mainly).

The media: the source of information for pretty much every person in the US. I did a report on bias this year, and it's ugly. The fact is that weather you watch Fox News or CNN or NBC, or you read the WSJ or the NYT or National Review, you are getting biased information. The media controls the people, and if a majority of the media (quantifiable by the number of people using a media source (and as their primary media source)) says one thing, then the majority of the US will believe it.

What does this have to do with anything?

It means that if the majority of the media says that a specific person/administration/group of people in Washington are making the economy worse/better, then the majority of the US will believe it.

Right now, the US is split about 51/49 between Liberal/Conservative sources, and 51/49 between Liberal/Conservative parties. So, there is about the same number of people who think the economy is/will be getting better as there is the number of people who think the economy is/will be getting worse.

Long story short: stalemate, which causes the downfall.

Why is this what causes the downfall? If a vast majority of people think the economy is good, then the economy will get better because people will spend more, and Reganomic's "trickle up" will work. If a vast majority of people think the economy is bad and is not getting better, then they will try to do something about it, and things will eventually work out.

The stalemate causes nothing to get done, and when nothing gets done, the economy slumps due to inactivity.

That explains how the economy won't get better in our current situation. How did this situation start, you ask?

The wars in the middle east were hated by a majority of the US, and the liberal media hated the wars in their reports. Then they said that because of the war, the economy will get bad. This caused panic, and people to stop spending, sell their stocks, and cause a crash (People didn't think that the economy was bad, but was about to get worse,... big difference). The liberal media timed this to go perfectly with their election candidate of choice: Obama, allowing him to win with fairly good margins over McCain.

The conservative media then retaliated with Glenn Beck, a charismatic libertarian TV host. And then a majority of the US thought that the economy was getting worse due to Obama. But not enough of a majority to stop the inevitable from happening: stalemate. The tides turned back in Obama's favor when Beck stopped his show, creating our 51/49 majority.

I, personally believe in conservative economic principals, but I don't think if a conservative won the election, we would be better off. Until a vast majority of the US population can rally behind a leader, a plan, and an opinion about the economy, we will be in a slump. The media is to blame (both sides), and they need to get their act together and stop thinking about getting their side in power.

That is all I have to say.

Hmm... thanks for writing this, pimathbraniac. I do agree that nothing gets done in the US because there is a huge stalemate in our government, and I agree that the media is largely at fault for catalysing this. That's why I think that next year, we should not pay much attention to our choice for president at all, but rather to our choice of representatives and senators, so that Congress can send good ideas up to the Big Cheese for him/her to sign.

I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7489


[edit]

Also, good heavens, please don't refer to Glenn Beck as a libertarian.

Things aren't going to get better because the people int control don't want them to.

It has nothing to do with republicans or democrats. They are both two heads of the same monster, controlled by the same people.

It's just a game that they get people to play.

Very, very well said. Very few people can make the insight you just made - it took me a long time to realize it myself.

Something I wonder is if knowing how to code actually improves peoples' ability to think well about politics and the like. This guy had a similar thesis, but claims that this ability to code well and think well is just born into certain people, and that most people don't have it and can never obtain it, which opinion I think is wrong and prideful.

IIRC he is a member of the libertarian party...



I'm not blaming a single party (if that's what you think. I don't understand the "republicans or democrats" part completely). It's because the people in control are (in the principles of democracy) the people, but the people are controlled by the media. Since the media is split and caused a stalemate, it won't get better because not enough people will spend money. You need a system where people will spend money, regardless, and that requires a vast majority on one side.

i dont understand politics, but i must say, the tv news is crap. i agree with that. i think that this site and the weather station is about the only news that i pay attention to. and thats all on the computer, so i get to miss the peopole argueing this or that is better.

@flyingfisch
perfect.

but that doesn't quite make him libertarian. I could easily be associated with the democratic party, for show, but actually be a hard core libertarian.

on the topic of this thread, the economy won't get better until the Federal Reserve stops with their QE and we stop trying to "stimulate" or spend our way out of it. Instead we should let the market take it's course and let resources allocate where they need to be allocated and let real prices set in, not the constant string of bubbles.

If there is one thing the media has done, though, is give people this idea that all the neo-keynesian policies are magically making everything work, even though it's setting us up for further harm in the future.

Flyingfisch was not blaming a single party - he was saying that both parties are just as bad, two sides of the same coin, each just as evil as the other. And there are some people, somewhere, someplace that we don't know about, working behind the scenes controlling all those people we see on TV - politicians, corporations, media, et. al.

He self identifies as a "conservative who doesn't happen to be a Republican", and as far as I know he has no party affiliation. However as far as putting him on a spectrum goes, he's much closer to the social conservative end of the party Republican (Sarah Palin) than the libertarian end of any party (Gary Johnson or the Paul clan for example).

Except for that small fact that things have already gotten better.

A *LOT* better.

But hey, why bother with reality when you can watch Glenn Beck amirite?

I'm gonna play Devil's advocate here and defend the media. The media is, plain and simply, what it's viewers make it to be. They say what they say because we as their viewers want to hear them say it. If we didn't, we wouldn't watch, they wouldn't have an audience base, and they'd quickly fade out of existence. Why does the media focus on violence when everyone claims to abhor it? Because our reptilian brains love that s**t, even if we're consciously repulsed by it. No matter how much we complain about it, we all tune in(or log on) when a gunman opens fire. Or a plane crashes into a building. Or a hurricane wipes out a city. When it comes to economics, we'll watch or read whoever is stroking our ego the hardest. If you're conservative and want to see conservative economics work, you'll watch or read conservative media sources that tell you things are bad under Democrats and good under Republicans. If you're on the liberal side, and want to see liberal policies work, you'll watch or read liberal sources that tell you the opposite. If you're libertarian, objectivist, socialist, bull-moose, etc, you'll watch or read sources that tell you whatever it is you want to hear. Everything the media says is dictated by the reaction of its viewers. The media doesn't control people, people control the media. The only culprit here is human nature.

The people are no longer in control. There are people somewhere that we don't know about, who control both parties, as well as the media.

They use the media to control the minds of the people, and they use the parties to make the people think they are still in charge, that they can change things by voting.

But whether they vote republican or democrat, there really is no difference. Both candidates are controlled by the same people.

Probably the only thing that would scare them would be if a substantial percentage of the US didn't vote. It would show that the people know the game, and they don't want to play it.

Also, you quoted the wrong person



Except that I don't really agree with Glenn Beck.

Oh my.



Calm down buddy, you're sailing flank-speed-ahead into Alex Jones/ZOG conspiracy territory here. Alf isn't real and he isn't using mind-control rays and an army of Jews to control your life. I'll grant you the monied interests have a lot of undue influence in our politics, but there certainly isn't any centralized control. The wealthy support whoever will best serve their interests, and the class of people known as politicians are the most ready to accept that support. You can think that's a terrible way to do things and wish to change it(many would agree with you, including myself) but at present, that's just how things get done.



That is already the case, in pretty much every single election:

http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

Unless you don't consider 35-45% to be a significant percentage.

DShiznit is completely correct in saying this is already the case. Except that it isn't what scares them, it's what keeps them in power. Only 45-60% of Americans actually fall in the traditional left-right political spectrum (depending on the polling methodology and how they subdivide categories), and not coincidentally, only about 55-65% of Americans actually vote.

And then there's voter fraud...

The Americans who don't vote still fall (though not with the parties) in the beliefs of the economy getting better or not. There are some neutrals, but those just add to the stalemate.