Obama's Downgrade

Your assuming human population will continue to grow. With current cultural trends around the world human population will plateau sometime relatively soon and soon after that will begin to fall.

Food for thought. Countries in Europe are already showing shrinking populations. USA is on the downward trend. Even growth is slowing in places like Africa and India - albeit it is still high there. Why did people have tons of kids back in the old days. 1.) Disease. Many more kids died, so lets hedge our bets, chances are someone will survive yeah? 2.) Kids = wealth. Most people worked the land. The more hands on the farm the more crops and plants could be cranked out. Kids didn't have ffxi and xbox back then, they got a hoe and a bucket, aka they were profitable ventures, not bottomless pits that sit on the couch and eat all your cheetos and chicken nuggets. 3.) Kids = retirement. Getting old stinks, back then they didn't have all these retirement places, 401k's, etc, who took care of you when you got old and weak. Your kids.

Don't base your choice on how many kids your gunna have perceived on what is good for the world. Have kids perceived on what you can support and what is right for you and your family

Back in February, I told my family/friends that the events in Wisconsin are going to be used as a launching pad for the demise of the tea party, today that process continues ^.^

You have some good points, Harpunnik. And I didn't consider at all that the population might stop increasing, you are absolutely right.

At this point I can't afford any children at all, but I'm still a child, only 25. I'll be able to afford one in a couple years. I've never been the type of girl who longed for a child, and my biological clock is either broken or simply not interested. Even holding my newborn niece in the hospital earlier this summer didn't stir any maternal longings. Maybe I'm broken as a maternity-type woman. :-(

But I do have a terrible soft spot for children that don't have homes. Same with dogs. Show me a new puppy in a local pet store and I'll think it's cute, but it's rare that I will feel the urge to take it home with me. Show me a homeless, sad dog in a shelter and I will wish all day that I could have brought it home. :-( I don't know. I'm broken.

I just had my first kid at 29...your fine...

Just pointing out that sometimes what are perceived problems of today are not even on the radar 100 years from now. Little over a hundred years ago we were probably trying to figure out what to do with the ever increasing threat of horse poop in cities. Although today we deal with smog, pardon the pun here, it is a whole different kind of animal.

Yeah...I'm still twenty-six, and got out of a five year relationship last November/December, so that might be way off anyhow if that does happen.

I'm too young to settle down

pfffft

also a kid in today society. oh god

You can only teach them so much until they go 2 school

Then you become the enemy!

it is actually scary to think about bringing a kid in to the world we live. i'm not sure if it's better to try to save the world or ride the wave.

Ride the wave dude!

I know from experience when faced with a big wave or possible death, I ride the wave. Hurray North Shore Oahu :D

lol keep dreamin..

Cutting Social Security and Medicare gets people voted out of office because... most voters apparently believe those two things are fairly good ideas!

We basically needed to have raised taxes on the upper 2% five years ago. Perhaps I'm not understanding the delicate economic theory at work here, but the only section of the economy that stayed pretty strong for the last few years was the luxury goods section, because only rich people were buying things. Even that segment took a hit at one point because it was suddenly unfashionable to be rich.

The Bush tax cuts should have been allowed to expire, and Obama should have given a series of well-timed speeches to rev-up the nationalistic spirit and put social pressure on rich people, not as enemies, but as people responsible for making the recession turn around. I don't know, encourage them to start public works projects like Carnegie did or something.

I miss Hawai'i. The pull of being a beach bum grows stronger the worse this world gets.

Nausi I have a link to the offical press release by S&P where it blames, yes blames the GOP for the downgrade. Maybe you should do your research like I did before you start flinging hate.

Link Below:
http://www.standardandpoors.com/servlet/BlobServer?blobheadername3=MDT-Type&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3DUS_Downgraded_AA%2B.pdf&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobheadername1=content-type&blobwhere=1243942957443&blobheadervalue3=UTF-8

if a troll didnt fling hate they would have no purpose.

Hopes, shattered.

actually the government throwing money around is exactly how they can fix this problem, however they've been throwing it the wrong way.

They need to repeal the tax cuts for the rich, and increase them more.

They need to start up projects like I mentioned earlier pay the people directly instead of trusting the corporations they flooded money into to hire people with that money instead of just to just sit on it.

They need to do something about OPEC, oil prices.

They need to do something about our trading in general.

The best way to reduce government overhead would be to reduce the size of congress, and cut pay and benefits, maybe even by law require a US popular vote on congressional pay increases, and set a term limit of 12 years (negotiable) for seats.

They need to remove the mandate for the highway funds to states thing with the alcohol @21.

They need to legalize and tax marijuana, and decriminalize the use of narcotics, and reduce penalties for possession.

Increase the minimum age to receive social security benefits.

Fix red tape issues with research in "ethical" related scientific fields.

Do something about the increasing costs for secondary education.

We need to build some new transportation methods, ie: high speed rail.

They need to steadily increase the strictness of k-12 graduation requirements, really should make people with below a 2.25 not eligible to graduate, focus less on history at an early age (more on later) and more on language/math to set fundamental skills early on. Also make it a federal requirement to learn at least two languages.

Also the patriot act needs repealed, and the space program needs to be restarted.

There's a lot of things the government needs to do, and a lot of people can easily see why, however it's not being done.

edit: and to the Japan thing, yes the war in Germany was just about over when we dropped the bombs, however Japan had no intention of surrendering and many more lives would have been lost in a land invasion of Japan, us and them.

It's over and done with, and short of maybe NK and a few other crazy *** nobody in this world would wish to see another one go off ever again. It was tragic, but 66 years ago...

Apparently Warren Buffet agrees that taxes on the rich should increase.