[imintheloserssquare]

what should be done about americas economy? does anyone have any ideas?
im just curious as to what others think about it.
i think alot of it started when these banks did all these sub mortgage loans to get people into more house than they could afford using ARM and now after 3-5 years of paying a $400 a month interest payment their payment balloons to $1800 and suddenly their faced with the cost of paying rent or feeding their kids. its about 90% the banks fault and the rest is the person who didnt read what they were signing into.
also we need to invest in alternative fuel/energy sources. the less gas we buy the price will start to go down.
also we should start eating locally grown foods because having food shipped from other states or countries costs money to ship. co-ops have the best fruits and veggies ive ever seen!

[Grav!ty]

I think it's the good old "guns or butter" thing. If any nation spends big on it's military the economy is sure to suffer.

[imnuts]

I think it's the good old "guns or butter" thing. If any nation spends big on it's military the economy is sure to suffer.

That's not necessarily true. The US spent huge on the military, both ours and those of our European allies before and during WWII and it essentially brought the country out of the Great Depression. However, the money has to be spent in the right ways, which I doubt it has been, and it's not something that you can keep up forever, which is what the Bush administration seems to be trying.

What I feel that the US needs to bring the country out of its current state with the economy is basically what Obama is proposing and similar to how the country worked its way out of the depression years. Despite what Republicans think, shrinking the government and reducing spending across the board is not going to help. What needs to happen is similar to the 1940s/50s where the government spends millions, if not billions of dollars, but does so here in our own country rather than shipping it all overseas and into the military. Public works projects to improve the US infrastructure (roads, bridges, communication lines, railroads), parks, and anything else that is a major public object. Spending all the extra money will give the hundreds of thousands of people who are currently unemployed jobs as it will take people to do the projects for either the government or the companies the government would contract out too. Since it's all going to be domestic work, all of the money should stay here. The increased money in people's pockets will increase spending on other things. Granted, not all the money that people spend is going to be on domestic goods, but anything would be an improvement. The reason I say that the government needs to do it is because they are really the only people that could start enough projects across the country to make any difference. Yes, other companies could technically help out, but any single company would do more for a small region and not that much on a national scale.