Mars Ho!
 

I'm not a Bush supporter (Why I felt the need to preface with that is unknown even to me) but hen he gave the speech on establishing a permanent Moon base and getting people to step foot on mars I was pleased...

Anyone else have thoughts or opinions?

To be honest, I think this, as well as his whole immigrant thing, are just unworkable ratings grabs. I mean, I've heard pundits on both sides of the fence say that both plans have no chance of making it through Congress.

Of course, IMO these plans can hurt him just as much as they can help him. I mean with a less than perfect economy, when we're spending sums like 78 billion in Iraq, it seems stupid to spend triple that amount to send somebody to the moon, let alone what it could cost us to send somebody to Mars.

Also, while Bush touts that immigrants will take jobs that most Americans won't take, that's because they're below minimum wage jobs that really should be done away with, as they bring down the economy. The only way bringing in immigrants could justifiably work, is that they *HAD* to be paid comparable rates (or better) to US workers, making them no more attractive to employers than US citizens. (The better part was to make them actually *LESS* attractive to US employers.)

So while Bush is free to use the powers of his office to attempt to bring in more support, as many other Presidents have in the past, I'm not sure if he's doing himself a kindness here. I see them as nothing more than obvious ratings grabs, and they're imperfect ones at that, as they carry a number of things that will piss people off as well.

Sky Warrior Bob

I don't see the point in spending huge amounts of money to go into space that could be better used to work out some social problems on earth.

Wait wait wait wait... the government doesn't have infinite money here (in fact, we don't have much anymore). A Permanent moon base?! What the hell? So, basically what he's going to do is spend SO much money and try to lower taxes a crapload. This doesn't make any sense! It hurts my braaaaaain!!!!!!

And the immigrant thing is off topic, But I think Maddox sums it up with his recent article ("Oops! You're Rascist." ) and a following up article "Rascism and scat, a powerful union". (Warning: strong language)

I agree...
somebody needs to sit bush down, slap him around a few times and say:
"hey, STUPID, we've got problems here, ON EARTH, ya know. so stop spending our rapidly decreasing government funds on this bulls*** and put it into things that matter, like our education system, our economy, and world peace dammit!"

I'm just going to sit back for a few decades and wait for this to actually happen.

Just wait until we are out of debt (if ever) to start this moon life. Then I'll be all for it.

Took the words right out of my mouth. All Bush is doing is try to earn votes, pure and simple. If any of you watched California politics, you saw all sorts of crazy crap being shoved through by Gray Davis in an attempt to remain Governor - most of which was repealed, failed to pass, etcetera afterwards.

We ain't making a moon base or seriously going to Mars anytime soon.

You wanna know why our economy is in the crapper? Here's a good example. We have a President who wants to spend billions of dollars in Iraq, billions more fighting wars in the numerous other countries that he wants to invade, many billions more sending people to the Moon and Mars, and billions more on a variety of other things (watch any of his State of the Union addresses, he always lists a half dozen things he wants to spend more money), doesn't want to cut spending on much of anything, and he wants the government to make less money by lowering taxes. So, the government is spending more money on a variety of things, not cutting spending anywhere, and making less. And he wonders why the economy has sucked for the last few years.
Don't think I'm unhappy with his tax cut, though. Considering that I make less than $15,000 a year, and yet I pay more than 20% of my income to taxes before I even make it, and another 10-20% to property, sales, gas, etc. taxes afterward, a tax cut is just what I need. The only problem is, without accompanying it with a spending cut, he's still siphoning money out of the economy one way or another to pay for all his spending.
Basically, in order for a government to spend money, they have to get it first. There are only three ways to do this:
1. Tax it. This takes money directly from businesses and consumers. When consumers don't have as much disposable income, they can't buy as much, meaning businesses suffer and can't employ as many people or pay them as much. When businesses are taxed too much, they have to cut wages or raise prices to pay them, meaning that the working class then can't afford to buy as much or as high quality stuff, lowering their standard of living. This directly hurts the economy.
2. Borrow it. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the national debt isn't owed to foreign countries, it's owed to banks, large-scale investors, businesses, and occasionally one branch of the government borrows money from another. When money is borrowed from banks and investors, this leaves far less money available to be invested in new businesses or to keep declining businesses afloat until they can recover. Excessive borrowing prevents economic growth. Also, when it comes time to pay back the debts, the government will eventually have to raise taxes to pay for them, causing the problems stated earlier.
3. Print it. Too much printing causes inflation, which causes a variety of economic problems.
So, the more the government spends, the worse our economy will get.

Anyway, a bit off topic:
How exactly do you propose to do away with those jobs? Are you simply going to have them not be done? Most illegal immigrants end up doing things like janitorial work, agricultural work, or manufacturing. Do you want things to never get cleaned, or food to rot in the fields, or the products that most of us (yourself probably included) use on a daily basis?

Considering that most illegal immigrants work under the table and are already working illegally, employers who hire them aren't going to give a flying fudge sunday about one more new law regarding illegal immigrants.
As for legal immigrants, forcing employers to pay them a higher minimum wage than American citizens would initially cause employers to refuse to hire them, causing a temporary increase in American citizens getting jobs. Then, when those immigrants become desperate for work and begin taking illegal jobs, they'll end up working for less and taking jobs away from American citizens.
There's a simpler way to make hiring American citizens more attractive to employers: eliminate the minimum wage. This way, Americans who don't have the skills to apply for more attractive jobs would still be competitive with illegal immigrants for low paying crap jobs. This would also mean that companies that specialize in those low paying jobs would be able to afford more workers for the same cost, meaning that more people would be hired and unemployment would go down (and, trust me on this, people without jobs would much rather have a crap job that puts food on the table than starve to death). This would also mean that more stuff (food, cars, homes, etc.) would be produced for a lower cost, meaning that within a few years, those employees who are being paid less than the current minimum wage would be able to afford the same amount and quality of stuff as they were able to afford under minimum wage, and everyone else would be able to afford more, meaning that everyone's quality of life would either remain the same or improve. This would also cause deflation (which, contrary to popular belief, is NOT economically harmful; while inflation can cause an economy to seem strong in the short term, it causes massive long term damage, while deflation makes the economy seem weak in the short term while causing long term economic improvements).

So, yeah, we can get every American a job without stopping immigration.

Sorry for muddying up the thread, but when people talk economics, I just have to put my two cents in. And no, I'm not sorry about the pun. :)

Actually, from my perspective, it isn't the fact that these jobs wouldn't get done. Its just that the companies who organize such work wouldn't make such a profit. I know for a fact that temp agencies & janitorial companies make quite a bit more than they pass along.

If minimum wage was 100% required, they'd just have to pass along more of their profits to stay in compitition. No big loss IMO.

Well yeah, there will always be illegal jobs. I mean, there's sweatshops begin found in NYC all the time. But that's where law inforcement comes in. If we make it illegal to pay less than minimum wage, then we can instill a punishment that could very well close down places that do otherwise.

I'm sorry, but no, no, and *NO*! Eliminating minimum wage would make us into a society of indentured servants for the rich & well-to-do, and would not be a good thing. I know you may believe what you said will happen after minimum wage is abandoned, but historically none of what you said is at all the case.

We're far better off with minimum wage than we are without it.

SWB
PS - if you respond, please try breaking up your text a bit more. Its easy to lose track of everything you said.