Cab Thoughts 7/21/12

Last year 50% of iron and cement in the world economy was used by China. Now with 7% annual growth they would double the size of economy. Now how will this play out in the availability and value of resources? And China's growth is not isolated.

"if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own."--Obama
So...if all achievement is earned by all, are failures earned by all? So...does everyone deserve a little jail time?

This quote above, from Obama in Atlanta this week, was a repeat of his Kansas riff and is as weak. http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-in-kansas.html and http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-in-kansas-2.html and http://steeleydock.blogspot.com/2011/12/obama-in-kansas-3.html. Interestingly, I tried to find a copy of the Atlanta speech in the press and could not. Not even a reference until FOX began to make a big deal of it. This was a big speech for Obama, the President and the Presidential candidate. Why was it uncovered?

So no one earns anything on his own, since communal contribution makes individuals excel. So we all build roads for the general welfare. So, should some people be allowed to use those communally built roads more than--or to the exclusion of--others? Should everyone have a car? Or should we eliminate private abuse of communal roads completely in favor of complete public transport?

When a successful local athlete returns to "give something back" what is it that he is giving back? What is it that he took?

For the first time in history, a major nation — Canada — has surpassed the U.S. in household wealth. The average Canadian household net worth in 2011 was $363,202, surpassing by $40,000 the $319,970 U.S. average.

“I’ve never seen anything as egregious as this in terms of overall conduct and behavior inside of a university.” --Mark Emmert, president of NCAA, on the Penn State disaster.  Well, then...

I'm sure Condoleezza Rice is an able public servant but if Romney picks her as VP it will prove he is too cruel to be president. It will open us poor electorate to months more of anti-Bush campaigning, so much so they may revolt and demand a dictatorship just to put us out of our misery.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended that PSA screening for prostate cancer be ended. Interestingly, prostate cancer deaths have dropped 40% and the finding of metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis has dropped 75%, all the direct result of PSA testing according to Dr. Catalonia, the head of Northwestern Urology. All the Urological publications have dismissed the Task Force's conclusion as nonsense. But wouldn't most people consider the Task Force's opinion a consensus? How could this disagreement exist?

Who appointed this Task Force, anyway? Was it the same guys that appointed the commission that is investigating Armstrong?

75% of U.S. Senators have Dynasty Trusts

IKEA and Walmart  have installed hundreds of millions of dollars of solar at their stores so that they have become power companies.

In Topsail, N.C. several multimillion dollar beach homes have been condemned because of beach erosion.

Last year, 14.5 million cars were sold in China. Only 5,655 of them were electric vehicles, while 2,713 were hybrids.

A funny line about wind turbines: the rule of thumb is the bottom blade of a wind turbine should be at least 50 feet above the nearest obstruction within 500 feet radius to get laminar flow. In turbulent flow, you have kinetic sculptures with absurdly low effectiveness.

Bill Gross of the bond monster PIMCO predicts growth of American GDP will be 1.9% annually for the next decade. Historical growth from 1947 to 2012 has averaged 3.25% with an all time high of 17% in March of 1950 and a low of -10.4% in 1958. This low growth is a disaster and will stain, rightly or not, whoever is in office.

Chuck Schumer called the Fed "the only game in town" and told Bernanke, "get to work" to fix the economy.

So a powerful member of the most powerful legislative body in the world thinks the economy is out of his control. Taxes, regulations, debt and laws are all ciphers in the face of the economy and our only hope is the Fed making money more available. Lord knows what we did for leaders before the Fed was formed.

      Should we get somebody better? Or at least maybe a second opinion?

      As of 2012-06 there were 111,145,000 in the private workforce.

· As of 2012-06 there were 56,174,538 collecting some form of Social Security or disability benefit. 8.7 million are on permanent disability.

· The ratio of SS beneficiaries to private employees just passed the 50% mark (50.54%).