StrangeSox

Even with both me and my wife injuring our knees on our first hike at Glacier, we had an incredible time. The injuries forced us to modify our plans a little bit (and I couldn't believe that none of the camp stores, aside from the one way down in Two Medicine, sell ace bandages), but we got to see two different areas we didn't originally plan on. We drove down to Two Medicine for an afternoon and went up to Waterton Lakes National Park in Canukistan last Friday. Pushed through the injuries to do the Grinnell Glacier hike, too. We'll definitely be back here. Now we are trying to plan our next trip. We're hoping for the Grand Canyon, but we're probably way too late to book anything down at the Phantom Ranch at the bottom. We're also considering a Pacific NW swing (Crater, Portland, Seattle, Rainer, Olympic, maybe Vancouver) and a Utah trip (Arches, Bryce, Zion, SLC), and maybe even Acadia. If anyone has any recommendations on these or other day-hiking oriented trips, it'd be much appreciated. We're focusing on National Parks right now as a starting point, but we're definitely not limited to them and not trying to visit every last one. We both loved hiking around Lake Tahoe and rafting in the Laurel Highlands in SW Pennsylvania. Here's a shot of the Granite Park Chalet from the Highline Trail, right before we started the steep descent down the Loop Trail (dropping over 2000 ft in 3.8 miles) and ran into a black bear right at the top. Ironically, this remote mountain chalet with pit toilets had the best cell reception I found on the west side of the park.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 5, 2013 -> 08:54 PM) I'm back into Fallout 3. It's so good. I would say best or second best game ever along with Ocarina of Time. I liked New Vegas more than FO3

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 29, 2013 -> 04:44 PM) Probably one of these three, maybe SF, either way a hell of a lot closer to the mountains. Spokane seems pretty awesome

Southwest?

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 1, 2013 -> 10:15 AM) Montana and Wyoming would definitely be awesome later on in life...not sure if I am ready to be that secluded quite yet though. I'd love to have a little cabin somewhere out in the mountains, but not as my primary residence. If you like rustic cabins, this tumblr-like site is awesome: http://cabinporn.com/

How is "can't someone else do it?" responsive to anything I said in that post? (btw when was the last time anyone posted a TDS clip here?)

That isn't limited to banks. S-O was in response to Enron, WorldCom and others, not banks.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 31, 2013 -> 01:26 PM) Can't someone else do it? Great, informative, relevant answer.

"It's American workers' own fault and not the hugely increased mobility of capital that wages are depressed and jobs are offshored or eliminated" is a pretty interesting argument that avoid addressing the shift in the distribution of the huge levels of prosperity we still collectively have. It's not as if the wealth is draining from the US, it's just that fewer and fewer people are capturing bigger and bigger portions of it, and the rest of us suffer as a result of that. It also ignores that this is cyclical--as your wages stagnate or fall, you need to find cheaper goods to purchase. Those purchases will further depress or eliminate domestic wages, which means those workers are buying cheaper things as well, and those might be the things you produce. Now your wages are depressed even further, etc. The idea that we can save domestic manufacturing jobs by having large numbers of consumers socially conscious in their shopping has the same flaws as other social-consumer movements. There's far too much individual planning, information gathering, tracking, assessment, and long-term thinking for it to be a realistic method of becoming the dominate model in a given industry. There will always be US-made, environmentally friendly, socially conscious, etc. companies that can occupy niches, but they can't really become industry leaders. There's far too many forces (economical and basic psychological/cognitive) forces pushing in the opposite direction. Hell, just trying to remember what seafood is sustainably fished is a giant pain in the ass, and that's just one food source.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 31, 2013 -> 12:04 PM) In general, not specifically. What were you supposed to have told people that the collapse of Detroit now proves? Unless you're going for the "Dem policies made it collapse" point, I don't know what you're getting at. And, if that is what you're going at, I want to know what alternative you'd have pursued that would somehow have not destroyed the economic base of Detroit and cities like it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 31, 2013 -> 12:01 PM) It isn't really glee as much as "I told you so". You told people that domestic manufacturing was going to collapse and leave the rust belt economically depressed for decades?

Moving costs (and I don't just mean the moving truck) aren't 0, though.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 31, 2013 -> 10:28 AM) Most of it is a compete waste of resources. Think about it, if you were willing to cheat the books by inflating asset prices, which was illegal then as well, what is going to stop you from signing one more piece of paper saying that you aren't really cheating anyone? So how do we prevent that sort of accounting fraud?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 31, 2013 -> 10:26 AM) Public disclosure of salaries led to a nice explosion of competing salaries. There was a huge drop from 2002 to 2003, following a big run-up prior to S-O's enactment. There was a big ramp-up leading into the housing/banking bubble, but that popped and we're still at pre-SO levels. http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/12/ceo-pa...ical-chart.html Given the two significant recessions we've had since 2002, I don't know that we can even claim correlation let alone causation.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jul 31, 2013 -> 10:23 AM) Not all pensions come from there. Also 30 years ago, would you have bet on Detroit being bankrupt? 1983? American cars were s*** and Chrysler had already been bailed out once. You're right that a system of retirement that relies on you 1) working for the same company for 30+ years and 2) that company continuing to be profitable and exist has plenty of its own problems.

Did some whitewater rafting on the Lower Youghiogheny River in Pennsylvania two weeks ago, heading out to Glacier National Park for a week on Saturday. My wife liked rafting so much that she's looking into a trip for GNP.

Ah, got it. You could eliminate that loophole without junking the rest of S-O though, right? I don't know that S-O is the best regulatory system we can create, but clearly something was f***ed up with Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson etc.

U.S. is pretty straight forward, as is BEA as a source. The only other abbreviation is "MNC" or "multi-national corporation." I made a typo in the post and changed it, hopefully it's clearer now. The takeaway is that the extreme mobility of capital means that fewer and fewer jobs are available in this country. More or less the "structural unemployment" argument when combined with technological job losses via automation or improved efficiencies leading to redundancy.

Job group from US-based multi-national corporations (MNC), domestically and abroad.

sarbanes oxley forces corporations to overpay executives?

Your father's reduced fixed income feeds into the cyclical downturn of the economy as a whole, driven by a huge drop in consumer demand.

Judge proposes August 19th deadline for motions against Detroit's bankruptcy filing

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Jul 30, 2013 -> 03:49 PM) Of course pensions have HUGE advantages, you make more money than you put in. It's essentially deferred pay. You are paid less now on the promise of compensation in retirement.

It's like Paul Ryan, super-serious-budget-policy-wonk's budget that projected negative unemployment 10 years out.

House GOP votes once again to defund ACORN, which hasn't existed for years. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/h...hp_ref=politics