Ask Slashdot: Did Baby Boomers Break America? (time.com) 609
"Automation taking jobs is only one symptom of a larger problem," argues an anonymous Slashdot reader, sharing a link to this excerpt from Steven Brill's new book Tailspin, which seeks to identify "the people and forces behind America's fifty-year fall -- and those fighting to reverse it." The excerpt has this intriguing title: "How Baby Boomers Broke America."
As my generation of achievers graduated from elite universities and moved into the professional world, their personal successes often had serious societal consequences. They upended corporate America and Wall Street with inventions in law and finance that created an economy built on deals that moved assets around instead of building new ones. They created exotic, and risky, financial instruments, including derivatives and credit default swaps, that produced sugar highs of immediate profits but separated those taking the risk from those who would bear the consequences. They organized hedge funds that turned owning stock into a minute-by-minute bet rather than a long-term investment... Regulatory agencies were overwhelmed by battalions of lawyers who brilliantly weaponized the bedrock American value of due process so that, for example, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule protecting workers from a deadly chemical could be challenged and delayed for more than a decade and end up being hundreds of pages long. Lawyers then contested the meaning of every clause while racking up fees of hundreds of dollars per hour from clients who were saving millions of dollars on every clause they could water down...
As government was disabled from delivering on vital issues, the protected were able to protect themselves still more. For them, it was all about building their own moats. Their money, their power, their lobbyists, their lawyers, their drive overwhelmed the institutions that were supposed to hold them accountable -- government agencies, Congress, the courts... That, rather than a split between Democrats and Republicans, is the real polarization that has broken America since the 1960s. It's the protected vs. the unprotected, the common good vs. maximizing and protecting the elite winners' winnings... [I]n a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the forces that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.
Brill argues that the unprotected need things like "a realistic shot at justice in the courts," writing that instead "the First Amendment became a tool for the wealthy to put a thumb on the scales of democracy." And he shares these statistics about the rest of America today:
As government was disabled from delivering on vital issues, the protected were able to protect themselves still more. For them, it was all about building their own moats. Their money, their power, their lobbyists, their lawyers, their drive overwhelmed the institutions that were supposed to hold them accountable -- government agencies, Congress, the courts... That, rather than a split between Democrats and Republicans, is the real polarization that has broken America since the 1960s. It's the protected vs. the unprotected, the common good vs. maximizing and protecting the elite winners' winnings... [I]n a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the forces that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.
Brill argues that the unprotected need things like "a realistic shot at justice in the courts," writing that instead "the First Amendment became a tool for the wealthy to put a thumb on the scales of democracy." And he shares these statistics about the rest of America today:
- For adults in their 30s, the chance of earning more than their parents dropped to 50% from 90% just two generations earlier.
- In 2017, household debt had grown higher than the peak reached in 2008 before the crash, with student and automobile loans staking growing claims on family paychecks.
- Although the U.S. remains the world's richest country, it has the third-highest poverty rate among the 35 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development...
Has he identified the source of a societal malaise? Leave your own thoughts in the comments.
And is Brill's thesis correct? Did baby boomers break America?
Legalized bribery (Score:5, Insightful)
Legalized opinions (Score:2, Insightful)
Is it? Here's $1 million if you'll change your opinion.
Re:Legalized bribery (Score:5, Insightful)
The root of all of these problems is that bribery is legal in the US. I would imagine that we have probably the most corrupt government in the modern world. Make bribery illegal again, and most of these problems would (eventually) go away, because we'd have a government that represented the citizens again.
Precisely this. The party dosent matter. Go to opensecrets.org and look at your representatives funding. If small donations are lower than 50%, they won't care too much but will maintain some interests if not in direct conflict with the majority donors. Under 25% and you may get a few bones on top of a couple of core issues only. Under 10% and things get grim, you are probably going to be completely sold out. Under 3% lol, just lol. You are no longer represented at all.
Re:Legalized bribery (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it's merely malaise. Legalized Bribery is the worst thing ever to happen to political campaigns, except for all other forms of bribery.
Political corruption always exists. Unlike cigar-smoke-stained backroom deals, if corruption of elected officials is above board, theoretically, we'd be aware of it as voters in a democracy and snuff it out at the ballot box... unless we're a bit too distracted and/or time-constrained by our busy little lives.
Re:Legalized bribery (Score:5, Insightful)
unless we're a bit too distracted and/or time-constrained by our busy little lives.
And if the people aren't paying attention, there is no law you can make that will get rid of corruption. Vigilance is the price of democracy.
Re: (Score:3)
unless we're a bit too distracted and/or time-constrained by our busy little lives.
And if the people aren't paying attention, there is no law you can make that will get rid of corruption. Vigilance is the price of democracy.
Humans are flawed. At some point in the evolution of the current state of democracy, folks with enough sense to vote decided to accept a certain level of malfeasance in their elected representatives... the jury's still out on whether this is a calculated stipulation of the inherent weakness of humans, or a complete capitulation to the base animal we're still trying to evolve from.
Re: Legalized bribery (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And if the people aren't paying attention, there is no law you can make that will get rid of corruption.
You can improve things by cutting government. If the corrupt divide up 30% of GDP it's s lot worse than letting them divide up 10% of GDP.
Cutting government is a lot better than telling people to spend even more of their lives watching over the 30-40% that’s already being taken from them.
Re: (Score:2)
Legalized Bribery is the worst thing ever to happen to political campaigns, except for all other forms of bribery.
Political corruption always exists. Unlike cigar-smoke-stained backroom deals, if corruption of elected officials is above board, theoretically, we'd be aware of it as voters in a democracy and snuff it out at the ballot box...
In what way is backroom deals worse than legalized bribery?
In a country where corruption is illegal, a politician who was seen partying on a $50 million yacht can end up in prison, or worse. Maybe there will be corruption still, but it will be more difficult to pull off than in one in which it's entirely legal.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Eh, there are legal ways to give you as much spending as you want (e.g. Super PACs) and the GP is probably also talking about lobbying, not just campaign contributions. These are about the most corrupt things you can have in a government system, indeed called "bribery" everywhere else, and you just "institutionalize" it so you can "control" it and call it a day.
It is fucked up. And just one of the aspects of the US political system that is undemocratic.
Only a few boomers did finance abuses (Score:3, Insightful)
Not all boomers were involved in the financial frauds and messes. Those did indeed cause trouble, should have been blocked as illegal right away.
However, our government has been lousy at catching abuses, at least as far back as the 1800s. Hear of the "robber barons" of that time? The term was not spuriously given.
Boomers have contributed in many technical fields, for example, and without those contributions the state of computing and microelectronics would be far back of where it is. But to understand that you do need to know a little history.
It should be noted that the push to get EVERYONE able to buy a house came from government, and that broke down the finance rules that kept the sharks out, leading to the takeover by so many fraudsters (of many ages). As I recall this started in the Clinton administration, but effects were not instantly obvious. To really screw things up takes a computer, and to totally gefuck the world takes a government.
Ehh (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of us did the best we could with what we had to work with. I hope you do the same, and your children will complain. And so it goes across generations, the way it always has.
Re: (Score:2)
The thing is, it's not like we don't have, even now, people from the generations before and after boomers and we notice the difference. Boomers are uniquely narcissistic and greedy in a way that their parents, and their children (and grandchildren), are not.
To some extent, sure. (Score:2, Insightful)
First up: The generational split is kind of a cheap division of humans in general. Few splits are really good though - but the artificial grouping on vague birth year ranges is particularly a weak way to draw meaning. Like, zodiac-level weak.
Even what we DO commonly believe about generations is largely about misunderstanding them. The whole "baby boomers were hippies" notion was largely based on statistical exceptions - sure, you could point to groups of hippies, but they largely did NOT represent the g
Plot twist. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it was the extreme postwar naivete of "the greatest generation", the generation that fought world war 2.
They broke the world in an attempt to build a better, non-violent world for their children --- the baby boomers, who grew up to be a bunch of assholes.
Oh the BITTER irony.
One thing (Score:3, Insightful)
There's just one thing that broke America: Hubris.
The belief that America is the greatest, best, top, first, you-name-it broke it beyond repair.
Hubris always turns a champion into a loser, from sports to finance to politics.
The "Me" generation? No, not them. (Score:2)
Crap! (Score:4, Insightful)
The blame is not on an entire generation, but on select individuals of that generation. The one-percenters, no matter what the age, are still the culprits.
Population Density? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that a question of density of population? Like in population has grown so much that everything is getting scarcer for everybody. I know the US are huge (I'm European), but nonetheless, some areas are so overcrowded that it's impossible but for the wealthiest to buy a property. The same goes for jobs: there are already a million people with the same skills than you but better at them, and available from all over the world thanks to globalization. It's becoming more and more difficult to stand out and not just be useless. You can make similar reasoning for almost all the things that people in their 30s have more difficulties to obtain than their parent. Isn't that all linked to the size of the population compared to the size of our little planet?
Re: (Score:3)
Density is part of it, but in the US, we have things like this:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/201... [nytimes.com]
That’s a special example, but smaller versions of that are everywhere.
Graft and corruption and bureaucratic incompetence add up when it’s pervasive and continues on for 50 years.
"Waaah" Shut up (Score:2)
FFS shut up, it's just more clickbait. This shit needs to stop appearing on
At the very least I expect the clickbait on here to actually be somewhat related to "clickbait for nerds". Not "clickbait for whiny morons."
Time frames. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Western world used to plan for generational time periods. Companies were set up with the intent of providing a regular profit over time, slowly increasing, but overall being reliable producers.
Back in the 70s, some people started to decide that they could start selling bits of these to make a fast buck, so you could buy a company, split it up into components, and sell bits of it for more than you paid for it. Voila, instant profit, and it'd only take a year.
Then investors started to want these immediate gains more and more. So more of the regular reliable producers were split up.
That put the regular producers up against the profit margins of the breakers, and many were written off as being "not profitable", making it tough to get loans to continue operating, meaning they had to sell up (which went to the breakers to get bits sold off at profit to financiers).
Investors getting used to the fast money only started to look at the immediate future. Can they make money in the next year? If yes, then all's shiny!
Very very few people in the West are now asking the question "Where do we see ourselves in 50 years?". If you're not asking yourself that question, you can easily find yourself on a path that looks rosy for the next few years, but with a huge drop that you just don't see coming. Or by the time you do, there's sod all you can do about it; the inertia of all the short termist vision catches up with you.
Instant gratification isn't a long term strategy.
I blame the late boomers more than the early boome (Score:3, Insightful)
I was born at the end of the baby boom, we came of age in the late 70's and early 80's, when the country was going through a backlash against the counterculture and political tumoil of the late 60's and early 70's. Gone was the optimism and hope for a better world replaced by greed. Everyone was trying to get MBA or Law degrees. Engineering, science, the arts? Most people we're interested. As my age group entered the workforce and started and gained experience they only seemed to care about making money, and as much money as fast as possible. And remember, it wasn't only Wall Street. The whole Dot Com boom was awash from get-rich-quick speculative investing from the Boomers and managed by the late boomers. The whole cynical stupidity of the browser wars was driven by assholes to make the web into electric metaphors for things that the Boomers knew how to monetize.
The visionaries behind the Web were outgunned by the banal greed of Bill Gates who is a classic Robber Baron, who is now in the stage of life where he is trying to buy redemption with good deeds. And even then, his good deeds are making him money. I've heard this from a number of NGOs who have worked with his foundation. They don't give unless they can get. And then we had the fake hippie Steve Jobs who helped spark the PC revolution and then spent the last half of his life doing everything in his power to crush it and turn general computing devices that could be customized and extended to fit you into consumer electronics that forced people to do things the way that Jobs wanted you to do.
For every Woz there were a hundred or more Jobs. Woz and those like him, Steward Brand is an early boomer, Linus is a later boomer but they are the rare exceptions that prove the rule. So yeah, the late boomers, we really did and do suck.
Re:I blame the late boomers more than the early bo (Score:4, Insightful)
Linus is a later boomer
Linus Torvalds was born in 1969. He's Gen X, not a Boomer.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're fucking lucky, actually paying into a retirement fund at 31 and being able to retire at 70. As a boomer, there was promises of pensions, that went away after some rich fucking punk bought out the business, went into massive debt and used the pension fund as collateral. The workers are the last to get payed in a bankruptcy and lots of boomers are now old and homeless due to young fucking MBA's and such leveraging the system to suck up pension funds.
When you pay into a pension fund for most of your life and it is gone, there is no 401k to fall back on. And this blaming a generation because the 0.1% do what they've always done is bullshit, all my peers, boomers, are facing the same thing as retirement looms, promised pensions that are gone and suckered into paying into pensions instead of savings.
Effect is supposed to follow from cause (Score:2)
Delays in the implementation of a safety regulation? How does that cause the kind of structural problems we see? Would everything be great if regulation didn’t have to face due process?
Yes, all the time and energy spent trying to secure a government advantage is productivity lost. The solution is less government power and money for rich people to fight over. Then instead of using the country’s talent to shuffle pieces around the board, that talent could be used for productive work.
A variety of policy and market reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a variety of policy and market reasons for the transfer of wealth from young to old.
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* One reason for the age-based increasing income increasing inequality [time.com] is the transfer of wealth and purchasing power from the society at-large to existing asset holders, who are typically older. And this is done via monetary policy.
Monetary policy is about trying to bring about prosperity via manipulation of the money supply. The net result of monetary policy is the transfer of purchasing power from one group to another. For example, inflation doesn't involve a transfer of money, but it makes a saver poorer and a debtor less poor by changing the purchasing power each one has, by changing the value of the currency. One uses monetary policy to stoke or reduce inflation. Or QE - Quantitative Easing. It was printing money [pbs.org] to buy bonds (government debt and mortgage debt). The printing of money has some side effect - it is not consequence-free. The recipients of that money firehose were made wealthier. And the asset bubbles which resulted also made existing asset holders (physical (e.g. real estate) and financial - stock market went from 11K (2011) to 25K (2017) in six years) wealthier.
Governments through the ages have always wanted easy, controllable, predictable prosperity, but in reality achieving prosperity is much trickier and chaotic. It requires first the correct intelligence, temperament and values of the population. Then the population interacts with the natural world and creates legal and physical and security infrastructure. Then, more chaotic, is the creation of items that people value (not merely to satisfy speculative demand (which is quite volatile), like items to gamble on, but things that will satisfy consumption demand (which is more persistent) - demand to consume those items, both goods and services and perhaps non-speculative financial products). And then the march of technology to continue to improve social welfare and the standard of living. And then through some luck, that value and purchasing power must be distributed in some semi-equitable way to the population so that it can consume those things they value.
That's complicated and volatile and not guaranteed. Manipulating the money supply is much simpler. Prosperity through the stroke of a pen. Unfortunately, if it were possible, Haiti or Sierra Leone could become prosperous in short order. Obviously, that will not happen. But manipulating the money supply and the value of the currency to bring about prosperity has been a siren song for policy makers and leaders over the millennia. And the side effect today has been the transfer of wealth from young to older.
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* Also, straight up preying on the young by using them as pass through entities for government money firehosed to the education sector. The young get stuck with the debt, and education costs escalate because they're being paid by our rich Uncle Sam. Yet we all see the reports on how much wealthier those with degrees are versus those without.
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* Next medical costs and insurance. There are both policy and market-based reasons for this.
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* Then, offshoring of manufacturing and intellectual property - offshoring of the production of value. Again both policy and market-based reasons for this.
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* Finally, we're on the dawn of a new industrial revolution, with software automation. The effect is the same as what happened with the industrial revolution - one person could create a much larger amount of product because of technology. To summarize, it was the "consolidation of the production of value."
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So - the net result of all of these factors? Young people are f-cked.
Wouldn't surprise me (Score:2)
Marx and Engels (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I'm the first to post this here, so here goes a very brief (and therefore not strictly accurate) account of what's happening...
Marx (Karl, not Groucho) and Engels predicted this in their books Das Kapital, 1876-1894. They understood the nature of capitalism in that is was a very effective system for increasing wealth inequality, i.e. it helps the rich to get richer by making the poor poorer, by exerting continuous downward pressure on earned income (wages, salaries, and contractual work) and producing ever more extreme mechanisms for the wealthy (owners) to accrue increasing control over capital for their own benefit.
Baby boomers, millennials, the gig economy, precarious employment, anti-union legislation, political and legal corruption, environmental degradation, unhealthy and dangerous working conditions, immoral and illegal wars, racism and police brutality, etc., are all symptoms of capitalism working as it is supposed to. Nothing's broken. This is how our chosen economic system works by design.
The "Golden Age of Capitalism", post WWII until the mid-1970s, was the result of massive wealth redistribution, e.g. tax payer funded public infrastructure building that created millions of jobs, rapid expansion and subsidy of further and higher education, and progressive taxation, whereby the the richest paid the highest rates of taxes in order to fund govt. infrastructure projects, education, etc., starting from after the Great Depression, which itself was caused by massive wealth inequality. In other words, the USA enjoyed a brief period of unprecedented economic prosperity because it adopted a form of socialist policies known as Keynesianism.
What did I miss?
BTW, this guy made a whacky film that runs through the central concepts modern life as we experience them today. It's dense, covering a lot of ground in a very short time, so worth using the pause button while you think through what he's presenting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:Marx and Engels (Score:5, Insightful)
Marx was wrong. Being at the poverty level in the U.S. puts your income in the 84th percentile for the world [forbes.com]. That is, if you're living in poverty in the U.S., some 80% of the world is worse off than you are.
The mistake Marx made (which you repeat) was that he assumed if inequality is increasing, that means the poor are getting poorer. i.e. inequality can only increase if the poor get poorer. But that's not true. Inequality can increase even when the poor get richer - as long as the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer, inequality is increasing. That's what capitalism does. Everyone gets richer, but at inequal rates. Those who find better means of becoming more productive (whether by hard work, a good idea, or just dumb luck) end up getting disproportionately richer.
And that ultimately is why Marxism fails. By eliminating this inequality, you also eliminate the incentive for individuals to make themselves more productive. You're not going to work an extra hour plowing that field, if the fruit of your extra labor ends up distributed across the entire country resulting in everyone (including yourself) getting just 1 extra grain of wheat apiece. And if you aren't increasing your own productivity, your country is not getting any richer, and your standard of living is not increasing..
The so-called "socialist" countries in Europe aren't really socialist. They're a hybrid socialist-capitalist. Even capitalism (inequality) to maintain an incentive for people to figure out new ways to become more productive, but enough socialism to keep the level of inequality in check. The U.S. is also socialist-capitalist, but favors the capitalism side a bit more. This results in greater inequality, but also yields a higher GDP per capita [wikipedia.org] (average productivity per citizen) than countries which favor the socialism side more. Neither is "right" - they're just different approaches based on how much you value higher productivity (standard of living) vs income equality.
The "Golden Age of Capitalism" as you put it happened because Henry Ford figured out that when he paid his workers more than the prevailing wage at the time, it actually increased his own wealth even more because suddenly his workers could afford to buy his cars. See, that's another thing about capitalism - it's optimized when the pay people receive is proportional to their individual contribution to the country's productivity. If a fat cat CEO is keeping his employees' wages artificially low to make himself rich, that actually hurts overall productivity. The CEO ends up wasting much of his income on non-productive toys like Ferraris and gold-plated toilet seats, whereas if the money had gone to his employees instead, they would've spent it more on essentials which would've contributed more to the economy (given other workers more work to do producing the things they buy).
Prior to Ford, workers were being underpaid. Once Ford began paying workers more, they began buying more, which created more demand for other workers to produce more, which resulted in them being paid more to fulfill that increased demand, which resulted in them buying more, etc. This feedback loop is what led to the phenomenal economic growth in the mid-20th century. Countries which overcome this hump are the leading economies in the world today. Their top 1% ($500k+/yr in the U.S.) only accounts for
Re:Marx and Engels (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Golden Age of Capitalism", post WWII until the mid-1970s, was the result of massive wealth redistribution, e.g. tax payer funded public infrastructure building that created millions of jobs, rapid expansion and subsidy of further and higher education, and progressive taxation, whereby the the richest paid the highest rates of taxes in order to fund govt. infrastructure projects, education, etc., starting from after the Great Depression, which itself was caused by massive wealth inequality. In other words, the USA enjoyed a brief period of unprecedented economic prosperity because it adopted a form of socialist policies known as Keynesianism.
I won't argue that these all played a part; but you're missing a massive truth from this time in history.
Of all the industrialized nations at the end of WWII, only the US and Canada escaped unscathed. The industrial capacity of the other main industrial powers -- particularly England, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan -- were beyond decimated. Factories throughout Europe and Japan were widely destroyed by the end of the war.
And while Canada's industrial capacity increased during the war years, with its significantly larger population and wealth the United States really remained as the only nation with significant industrial output for several decades. It took a roughly generation for Germany and Japan to get back to pre-war output levels. Korea and China weren't heavily industrialized before the war, but built capacity and eventually because industrial powers as well.
The point being, America enjoyed a good decade or two being the only significant industrial power on the planet. The USSR challenged the US in some areas certainly, but they weren't a significant international supplier of manufactured goods (outside of weapons). It took other countries decades to build the sort of capacity needed to challenge the Americans.
But today Asia is heavily industrialized, as is Europe. Japan overtook the US in certain areas back in the 70's and 80's (areas such as cameras and consumer electronics); Japan, Korea, and up-and-coming China are generally considered to have overtaken US automotive manufacturer in small to mid-sized vehicle categories as well (while German, Italian, French, and British manufacturers have put their marks on the high end).
The US had an advantage for an entire generation due to industrial capacity in much of the rest of the world being pounded into rubble. That is no longer the case. Where once the US had no competition, today they do.
Again, not to discount anything you've said -- wealth redistribution built a lot of very important infrastructure for the US. But you have to keep in mind that, during those times, the US didn't really have to compete with much of anybody. They got to win by default for decades. But that's not the world of today, and unless WWIII breaks out (and leaves North America primarily untouched), there isn't any way to turn back the clock to a time when the US had all the infrastructure, and everyone else was rebuilding nearly from scratch.
Yaz
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Capitalism brings immense benefits to the world. Poverty around the world is less than any time in history. Energy is cheaper than it has ever been before. Technology, by proxy of microprocessors and Moore's law have brought down the cost of communications thousands of times. Food is cheaper than it has ever been in history. We're in less wars, and conflicts, as a planet, than any time ever before i
No (Score:2, Redundant)
This reminds me of a cartoon from the 60s with a caption of "your fault!" that shows some hippie pointing to his dad, who is pointing to the granddad, who is pointing to the great-granddad, who is pointing to eventually back to a monkey with a startled look on its face.
No, the baby boomers didn't create all the problems of the world.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the baby boomers didn't create all the problems of the world.
I agree, it was the Greatest Generation.
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the baby boomers didn't create all the problems of the world.
I agree, it was the Greatest Generation.
No, it wasn't their fault either. They were set up by the people who profited from the war. Once they were all traumatized from killing each other, people are easy to manipulate, anything is better than war. The Baby Boomers were traumatized by their parents who came back from war, so they were easy to manipulate too. After that it was all advertising which keeps the trauma response in place whilst giving us the illusion of freedom.
We're all to blame because we're too fucking stupid to see we are being manipulated.
As a later Boomer (1955) (Score:2)
How anyone could think it it is OK to run up government debt, budget after budget with deficits, not properly funding the lavish pensions promised to public employees and now the outright corruption in the bureaucratic and political leadership in government. Just to name a few things.
Did the boomers run things well, the only answer can be no, not that well. Beca
Loss of stability broke America (Score:2)
People like to blame generations, but I think the overall loss of stability is to blame. I work in IT and am doing well, but I know that a CIO coming in and wanting to make his mark could send my job to Infosys or Tata and put me out on the street. You didn't have this in the baby boomer years...there were practically no layoffs and companies kept their workers for a full career. People could reasonably expect to work for maybe 2 or 3 employers their whole career, and now long tenure employment is very hard
Heh... (Score:2)
Ferret
Hey it's just business, suckers... (Score:2)
I mean, my fellow Americans.
Workforce Inflation with Wage Dilution (Score:3)
I am enjoying this thread, because so many people have discussed insightful perspectives on the social and economic dynamics behind all of this. If nothing else, one can appreciate that the stresses on modern life bred by the Baby Boom generation are quite complex and multifactorial. As one of those Baby Boomers, here is another perspective on this topic that I have perceived as society has changed over these years. It suggests that some of the deficits of modern society are an unintended consequence of morally righteous movements in that era, activities meant to promote social equality and broader educational opportunities. Note - this is not an argument against education and equality, just an abstract observation of social and economic dynamics.
This thesis can be described as “workforce inflation with wage dilution”.
The post-war period circa 1945-1980 was, in the USA, an era of unprecedented optimism and middle class wealth. People could fulfill the American dream of home ownership, employment, and social security. Yes, there were negatives, like the Cold War and the A-bomb, Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Generation Gap, but the anxieties were balanced by the inspirations. There were gadgets galore, easy lifestyle, cultural robustness, and a sense of purpose and mission in projects like the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, the United Nations, Rock and Roll, Levittown and the suburbs, Route 66 and the open road, the Space Race, and so many others. This came on the heels of a well tooled industrial infrastructure, a highly skilled workforce (including Rosie the Riveter and the ladies), and a post war surge in college education. So, if you are living in the 50's or 60's, listening to Elvis Presley or Little Richard on your portable radio, watching the Smothers Brothers or the Apollo moon walks on a brand new color TV that you bought at a suburban shopping mall that you drove to in your Chevy or Olds, while the dishes and clothes are being washed automatically for you, life could hardly be imagined to be better.
That unprecedented social ease and economic robustness was the product of just half the population working. In that era, the women stayed home to "tend the hearth", while the men worked. With half the adult population at work, and half at home raising children with family values, then society, for the majority of people, was at a peak of "feeling good". Then came women's lib and educational and social equality, products of the Bay Boom era. Suddenly the workforce is diluted with twice the number of job seekers to do the same number of jobs that gave us unprecedented economic success. This is NOT a diatribe against women or equality. Translated to modern terms, that was the end of an era in which, in a society where committed domestic partnerships were the consistent norm, one partner was out of the house "bringing home the bacon", while the other partner raised the family, crucial to the perpetuation of primary education, values, and social norms for the next generation. So, at that time, we had extraordinary wealth, material largesse based on manufacturing prowess, and cultural optimism which required only half of the adult population to produce, while the other half of the adult population stayed at home to perpetuate respectable social values.
What happens though if the other half, the stay-at-home half, suddenly wants to and does enter the workplace? By spending less time at home, then social mores and family morals risk becoming diluted, corrupted, or forgotten. At the same time, the workforce is now doubled, twice the people working to make what was already a peak or epitome level of material production. The problem is that there is a certain fixed economic value in the existing material production. If a new TV is valued at $100, having two people instead of one to manufacture it does not change its relative value, and thus its retail price cannot vary too much. The company cannot charge $200 because people's wages have not gone up, so $200 is overpr
What's with the 'did THEY' bulls***? They are US. (Score:3)
...and I don't mean we're all baby boomers, I mean that baby boomers are the same people with the same motivations that I see around me every day. The immediate gratification and status and symbol seeking culture.
Baby boomers just happened to be the generation where it started rolling downhill faster. The current generation in their late 30's and early 40's (as one example) is simply pushing that faster and faster as the gears of our economy and society work more and more loose.
Want someone to blame? There's someone you can - it's YOU.
1913 (Score:3)
The US economy was destined to be broken by the most siginficant event of the year 1913. That was the passage of the 16th Amendment enabling a US income tax.
50 years later, US President John F. Kennedy said, " "The largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources and to a higher rate of economic growth is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.” John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963 "
Since then, it has only gotten worse. According to the proponents of a major competing financing mechanism, the Fair Tax, 22% of the price of any good manufactured in the USA is comprised of the cost of US income taxes. The US income taxes, not labor rates, are the real reason that manufacturing largely fled the USA. Don't believe it? Consider that, according to the auto companies who whined in 2008 when 2 out of 3 were going bankrupt that workers were costing $78 / hr in total compensation. Sound high? Consider that it takes 30 - 33 person-hours to build a car in the USA. Multiply that out to get about $2,500 labor cost. Then plug in the 22% cost of US income taxes to a $40K American-built SUV. That's $8,800. So, $2,500 in labor or $8,800 in tax expense. Which would be better to get rid of, enslaving the workers and paying them $0, or getting rid of the income taxes, which are simply legalized stealing of people's money by the gov't.
Looking at income taxes from an unconventional point of view, they are simple slavery. What did the old slave owners do to slaves? They stole the proceeds of the slave's labor for themselves. What does the gov't do? They steal the proceeds of the American people's labor for a portion of the year. We talk of tax freedom day, which this year is supposedly April 19. Last year it was April 23. A trend in the right direction, but woefully inadequate. The gov't is essentially the slave owner, we are the slaves, and the situation exists from January 1 to April 19 this year.
Tax freedom day should be January 1, the income taxes should be totally repealed, and I favor the FairTax to replace them. The FairTax is a consumption tax on new goods and services that occur above poverty level spending for each person's living situation. That is, if you're a family of 4 and the poverty level is $24,000, the gov't gives you enough money in a monthly check to pay the FairTax on $2,000 of spending per month. If you're single, and the poverty level is $12K, you get enough money from the gov't every month to pay the FairTax on $1000 of spending for that month.
Bill Archer, former head of the House Ways and Means committee, commissioned a survey to ask 500 foreign CEOs what they would do if the US passed the FairTax. 400 of them said that they would build their next factory in the USA. The other 100 said that they would move their company headquarters to the USA.
Sadly, we'll likely never get the FairTax passed because people have been successfully duped into believing that "corporate taxes" are paid by those mean old rich corporate executives who suffer mightily when they have to cough up those taxes out of their own pockets and thus diminish their playboy, high-living lifestyle to the delight of said unwashed, duped masses. The reality is that those mean old corporate executive simply raise the prices of the goods manufactured by the companies that they control, lower the wages of the workers in the companies that they control, and reduce dividends for the stocks the companies use for financing, all to take those monies saved to send the corporate taxes to the US gov't. Sadly, sometimes these price hikes, especially, make US products more expensive on the market than the foreign-made products built in countries with higher corporate income taxes (which was all other countries until earlier this year when Trump lowered the tax rates from 35%, where it had been since 1941, to 21%. Due to this reduction, the economy is "taking off." But it could be massively better if all the income taxes were lowered to $0.
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Boomers broke the planet, never mind just the US. The global economic crisis, unaffordable housing, climate change, student debt, the pensions crisis... Many countries are suffering from their mistakes.
That's not too only malice, although it is frustrating that there is so little willingness to fix things now. Us gen X are in the middle, struggling a bit but also aware of how much more screwed millennials are.
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Bad News is simply more prevalent today due to the number of 24 hour news feeds available to the average dumbass, AKA, the target market... the a.d. is overwhelmed with the amount of information sent his way, her way... frau - (r+a)ck, it's just important nowadays to be inclusive.
Soaking up bad news? Shite... that's just paying attention nowadays.
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In the beginning things were simpler. We had news papers, which were sold for money. These generated direct some direct revenue from which you could evaluate the popularity of your news. On top of that people would pay you additional money if you let them advertise for their produ
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a friend years ago who was depressed. She was tall slim attractive, high salary, highly educated not a drug addict or gambler or anything. I suggested she go to live in India for 1 year and it would have solved her depression for life.
Chronic depression does not work like that.
Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
You do not understand chronic depression, a chemical imbalance in the brain, at all
Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither do doctors, actually, since the primary mechanism of 'curing' depression in the 1st world is to pump patients full of poorly-understood pharmaceuticals with negative side effects.
And yet the people suffering from chronic depression turn into functioning members of society when they do take those pills. So I'll take the non-understanding doctors thank you. They do a better job than the "just enjoy life more" happy hippies who convince people with serious problems that drugs aren't helping and they just need to absorb positive energy from unicorn farts.
I used to know someone like this. We cut ties after she convinced someone to not take anti-depressants anymore and doctors were just poisoning her. 2 months later the found that someone dead with her head in an old school oven.
Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who suffers from mild chronic depression, I can tell you that anti-depressants work for me. They *do not* make me happy. They make it possible to be happy.
If you're having other effects from the ones you're taking, you need to work with your doctor to switch to one with fewer side effects. I had one that put me into raging anger when at the end of the day. Switching eliminated the daily anger.
I'd no sooner go off anti-depressants than someone should go off heart medication or insulin. Those without depression or an understanding of it that can go pound sand.
Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
"People in a war zone don't get depressed"
What a crock of shit. Every single study of the subject has found a large, sometimes massive increase in rates of depression (and anxiety and PTSD and bedwetting and many other forms of psychological trauma) among those living in war zones (and refugees, too). Unsurprisingly, having your home blown up, seeing your mother raped, being forced to flee with nothing but the clothes on your back, etc etc has a very bad effect on your mental health.
"I think the internet has reached max stupidity."
Never a truer word spoken.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're describing isn't depression; it's called feeling a bit sad.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are alive now you have better housing, a better car, better global travel, better communications, better access to information, better health care.
Neither of my grandparents had a college degree. But they raised three children and had a house with a large yard before they retired. And then after they retired they moved down to Florida and had a house with a swimming pool. Myself, I have a PhD and work about 50 hours a week as a clinical genomics software developer and I'm just breaking even living in a little one-bedroom apartment with my wife and daughter.
When I was boy wondering whether I'd be able to support myself financially, I would take comfort in the idea that, if worse came to worse, I would be OK with working an honest 9-5 at McDonalds to support myself. But, these days, even if you can manage to get a job at McDonalds, which is by no means guaranteed, you won't earn anywhere enough to support yourself - let alone a family. And, these days, on the subject of healthcare, even a relatively minor illness can wipe you out financially.
So, in terms of things that matter, such as feeling economically secure, I'm not really sure that I'm all that much better off than my grandparents (or parents).
I had a friend years ago who was depressed. She was tall slim attractive, high salary, highly educated not a drug addict or gambler or anything. I suggested she go to live in India for 1 year and it would have solved her depression for life.
Maybe she was depressed because she had lousy friends who would dish out boatloads of sanctimonious advice when they should have just shut up and listened with caring and compassion. :)
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That's not how depression works. You can't just snap out of it by avoiding negative news or observing people who are in a worse situation than yourself.
If only it were that easy.
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Life is objectively, scientifically going downhill. I don't blame the boomers for anything, but they did live their lives on the top of the hill, being born after a long ascent from badness, and dying just before a clear and obvious descent into badness that will probably span hundreds of years.
This is reality:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
And this:
https://www.theatlantic.com/in... [theatlantic.com]
And I could give you loads more from reputable government, scientific and military sources detailing coming food security cr
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:4, Interesting)
The only thing wrong with people is their internal attitude and their sponge like ability to soak up bad news, and as much as people make up the country that is what is wrong with the country.
There's a simple fix for the current political situation:
1. Ignore all news/media/talking heads/fear mongers
2. Vote for a third party
Only when you have a third party (even a crazy one) that can alter the balance of power, will those in power start listening to the voters.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:4, Insightful)
Millennials are the first generation for a very long time to be poorer than their parents. Homes are less affordable for them. The free/cheap education their parents enjoyed has been replaced by massive debts.
Yes, modern cars are better, but boomers benefited from cheap oil and being free to pollute the world. They feathered their nests and passed the debt on to their children.
Now they are retiring at 65 with decent pensions. Millennials are looking at working to 70+ and then being poor. The social contract has been broken.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've read a few articles over the last couple of months that indicate that millennials are saving more, inflation adjusted, than their parents were at the same age, but they're still less able to buy houses.
I did the calculation here for what we pay postdocs a couple of years back. The exact numbers don't matter too much: Wage increases are n% a year, house prices are increasing by m% per year. As long as m is greater than n, eventually you will reach the point where no matter what percentage of your income you save, you will never be able to afford a house. With some fairly conservative estimates of n and m, I found that within a decade the increase on the deposit required to buy a house each year will be more than a postdoc makes in a year, before tax. Postdocs make around 2-3 times the median wage here. Someone working an unskilled job will never be able to own a house here already.
Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with you there are a lot of gloomy responses to this topic, and that's probably not the most useful attitude. However I think you may be overrating life in contemporary America.
"If you are alive now you have better housing, a better car, better global travel, better communications, better access to information, better health care."
Better housing? Not really. Better insulation and climate control, sure. But the quality of building in the past 40 years is shittastic compared to pre-WWII building quality.
Better healthcare? Well, if you have access to healthcare, then yes it's immensely better than it was even thirty years ago. Alas, untold millions still lack real access to healthcare. Remember that the (fiendishly expensive) "cheap" plans under Obamacare do NOT actually provide access to non-emergency medical services.
The other items you listed - yes, absolutely better now.
"The country (even the poor) have more wealth than ever in all of history."
Obviously false. Cheap plastic consumer goods from Walmart are not wealth. Land and productive capital are wealth. The poor have just as little of it today as ever.
"Many rich people from other countries would be upgraded to be poor in the US. Many rich people from the past would be upgraded to be poor today."
I can only assume you've never seen how rich people in poor countries actually live. Living in a giant villa with servants, a driver, etc is WAY nicer than living in a tiny shoebox apartment in a dangerous neighborhood (or lifeless suburb, if that's your thing) of an American city. Even if the nominal price in dollars is higher in the American slums.
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This is a great story you're telling yourself, but it's not true. Which is kinda the point. For example, poor people in the US do not have better health care than they did 30 years ago, not least because it's more difficult to access and much more expensive.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:4, Insightful)
Baby boomers: ...
Millennials: ...
Myself, I'd blame an abstract concept: greed.
There's a saying, with quite a bit of truth, that "you can't con an honest man". Ordinary people are being deceived by the false promises of filthy rich politicians because of their greed.
In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said that the USA should have a government of, by, and for the (ordinary) people. Formal cooperation in the form of formal government has tremendous benefits. But the fundamental challenge is requiring the leaders to use their power for the benefit of those they govern (ordinary people) rather than their own personal benefit - in a certain sense, insuring proper fiduciary responsibility. So all kinds of mechanisms are needed to keep the balance of power tilted in the direction of the governed - the ordinary people: elections, open transparent government, freedom of speech, due process, etc.
The fundamental challenge is to keep the USA from turning into an aristocracy/oligarchy where the USA is governed by a small hereditary ruling class.
But the problem is that people who are members of the emerging hereditary ruling class make all kinds of false and deeply unethical promises to the ordinary people "We'll invade Iraq and take their oil so you ordinary people can have cheap gas for your SUVs." If ordinary Americans were people of integrity they would reject these false promises "It's not ethical to wage a war to take another country's natural resources." But instead ordinary Americans fall for the lies. Or, more recently "I'll get 'your' jobs back from the Chinese." Rather that looking for ways to work hard and make the world a better place, ordinary Americans are looking for ways to get something for nothing by keeping the rest of the world trapped in poverty and ripe for exploitation.
If ordinary Americans want better lives for themselves then they need to take a hard look in the mirror and resolve to be better people: more honest, more generous, and with much more integrity.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Interesting)
If ordinary Americans want better lives for themselves then they need to take a hard look in the mirror and resolve to be better people: more honest, more generous, and with much more integrity.
Having been to other countries, Americans are plenty honest, generous and upstanding. I've met maybe 3 Americans lie or act disrespectfully towards me, out of thousands. Most of them go out of their way to help.
The problem is, none of those attributes actually make anyone wealthy. Do you ever wonder why "making an honest living" is synonymous with not being rich? If anything, Americans are too naive and trusting. Just by being told "I'm going to bring back jobs", half of the country votes for Trump. Nevermind that he's a billionaire who could not possibly understand what poor folks go through, or the fact that the only thing of note that he did so far was giving himself a tax cut.
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He was up against Hillary Clinton. It's not as if the voters had an honest, decent alternative.
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I don't think she was dishonest. However the image has stuck into people's minds ever since she said she didn't like to bake cookies. She and the democratic party should have realized the sheer amount of baggage she brought with her. And add in the whole political family issue: people didn't want either Jeb or Hillary, that brings in a concern that neither party was able to field good candidates without relying on reruns.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the excuse for Iraq was "They invaded Kuwait, we have to help them". The second time, it was "YELLOWCAKE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YELLOWCAKE" (guess what was never found), followed with "OMG, CHEMICAL WEAPONS!!!" (also not found).
Many people, mostly younger protested from the beginning even while the media dutifully delivered the message that protesting the war was spitting on war heroes.
I don't recall "we'll steal their oil for you" being given as an excuse (at least not publically).
Of course that's even funnier considering that the U.S. is a net producer of oil.
I find it funny you talk about working hard on the subject of jobs not available. That sounds like people who WANT to work for a living but not finding a way to do it.
Certainly, greed is involved, but many of the victims aren't the ones with the greed. Instead, when they demand a level playing field, they are accused of greed in an attempt to shame them into accepting a slow decline to 3rd world conditions for the masses.
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reference [energy.gov]
And Gen-X actually.
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If ordinary Americans want better lives for themselves then they need to take a hard look in the mirror and resolve to be better people: more honest, more generous, and with much more integrity.
It's easier than that. Stop voting for only Democrat or Republican.
Get a third party in the mix with some double digit voter turnout then watch the how the game changes.
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Like happened in the 90's?
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I think it was the end of cheap oil.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Informative)
Baby boomers: The transistor. The laser. The internet. Manned moon landings. Manufacturer to the world.
None of these things were done by Boomers. Boomers were the generation born from 1944 to 1964. The oldest were in grade school when the transistor and laser were invented. They were in high school when the space program was launched.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
Baby boomers: The transistor. The laser. The internet. Manned moon landings. Manufacturer to the world.
The first commercial silicon transistor was produced by Texas Instruments in 1954. This was the work of Gordon Teal, a man born in 1907. He was not a Baby Boomer.
The first laser was built in 1960 by Theodore H. Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories. Maiman was born July 11, 1927. He was not a Baby Boomer.
ARPANET, the precursor to the modern internet, was started in 1967. The first message was sent in 1969. The very youngest of the Boomers worked on it. However, the majority of that work was done by older generations.
Same goes with the manned moon landings. The majority of the work was done prior to 1969, the year of the first landing. The last moon landing was 1972. Neil Armstrong was born in 1930. He was not a Baby Boomer. Most of the work done to get us to the moon was done by non-Boomers.
As for "manufacturer to the world", I'm not sure what this is. Again, manufacturing peaked in the US prior to the time Baby Boomers controlled the majority of businesses.
It would make more sense if you gave Boomers credit for Apple and Microsoft, the two companies responsible for the PC computing boom and the smartphone.
Millennials: Facebook. Twitter. Selfies. Selfie sticks.
Zuckerberg is a millennial. So yes, Facebook is their creation.
The co-founders of Twitter are all Gen-X.
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As for "manufacturer to the world", I'm not sure what this is.
He probably means how baby boomers moved the manufacturing to China...
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There's a reason the ROM in the Apollo program was called "Little Old Lady Memory". The space suit liners were made by older seamstresses from Playtex.
As for microwaves, they weren't made in the U.S. for very long.
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You too recall... a Time Before Microwave Ovens? Wow. That was something of a watershed event, wasn't it?
They arrived en masse in our area, it was kinda freaky, really--in 1975, nobody had one, and they were just something you saw mentioned every so often in a filler story on the evening news ("In the 80s, you'll be cooking on a stove without burners. After the break, we'll show you what it might look like... "). In 1977, everyone in the fucking neighbourhood had one.
By 1978, somebody's kid brother had take
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:4, Funny)
Baby boomers: The transistor
Amazing! They did such an amazing invention even while still being toddlers!
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Baby boomers: The transistor. The laser. The internet. Manned moon landings. Manufacturer to the world.
Millennials: Facebook. Twitter. Selfies. Selfie sticks.
The laser and the transistor were invented in the 1950's. At the time of the moon landings, the oldest boomers were in their late teens and early 20s. Try again.
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Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like a boomer, claiming credit for shit their parents did. Transistors (1947), Laser (1960), ARPAnet (1969), Manned Moon Landings (1969). Manufacturer to the world was the 40's and 50's (when the rest of the world's economy was destroyed). The Boomers were between 8 and 24 when the moon landing happened. So, yes, you were alive during all that shit. But your generation didn't do any of it.
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Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:4, Interesting)
millennials: treating games like real life.
Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that it's based even deeper - the concepts that have been designed by economic "experts" where mantras like "just in time", "warehousing of resources is bad" and ponzi-like retirement schemes have been built where the next generation has to pay for thd retirement of people born before them, even if they live longer. The retirement issue is one of the main problems for Greece. And that started already with people born in the 40's.
Subprime loans is not just part of the 2008 crisis, that was just the tip of an iceberg. Foreclosures are used without realizing that the banks ends up with the short end of the stick in way too many cases.
Healthcare only available for those that can afford it resulting in people not able to afford it to become an economic burden for society.
Cost of living in some areas has become so high that people need food stamps even if both family members have a job just to be able to raise their kids.
Education that's ridicuously expensive.
Inefficient and aging transport systems in cities where people waste many hours commuting - and that's eating up productivity. Add to it the misdirected idea that if it's getting harder for cars to get through people will use public transportation and the local trafgic situation will be safer - at the cost of lost man-hours. Now there's even talk about that the main transit roads in the cities damages the social life and causes particles impacting health - all while apartments are built just beside these transit roads.
City planning where areas of living is well distanced from areas of work forcing people to use cars or buses. And there's no point in moving since then the spouse will suffer the same problem.
Devices that are use and throw away - like mobile phones that are junk once the battery fails. And manufacturers that also maximize their profits on repairs. Cars is one example - the profit is maximized on the aftermarket side, the vehicles may even be sold at a loss. A lot of things also are getting more and more impossible to repair since they are built on specially designed parts - like batteries - that become impossible to get after a few years.
Taxes imposed on money not in circulation, like your house, that are raised just because you make improvements on the house with already taxed money. Or if you sell your house or apartment - then there are taxes too, which keeps people from moving even if they want, so old people sit there in a large house even though they could be fine in an apartment just because it's actually too expensive to move.
The value of a company is calculated on the short term profit of the company, not on the investment in future development. So companies can show short term good profit by firing their research&development teams, but effectively they are gutted and zombies. Internal invoicing schemes are also harmful - it's a misdirected idea on chasing costs that generates more cost. A lot of companies also look at projects to take care of the development, but in many cases those projects are set up in a way where you win each battle but lose the war.
Overly detailed specifications and solutions selected because they look good instead of being most efficient - or even fulfill the personal whim of a politician are also part of the problem. Like making a bridge that looks nice but is so low that shipping is constricted.
Overall - hate the bean counters that are short-sighted and only look at immediate profits as well as politicians looking to build monuments of how good they are.
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I was more thinking of the principle of uncertainty - the stronger you observe factors in economics the stronger you influence them. The factors may be strengthened or weakened, but the observer that sends the message isn't intentionally changing the flow of history - it's the accountants and economy specialists that sees that "oh - he got a Nobel Prize for that - then it must be true" while it is only true if you aren't aware of the mechanics around the actions.
Other people may also see and learn from it a
Re: There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Yep commutes are bad, but that's fixable by living somewhere where your commute goes against the general flow of traffic. It's what I do."
Apples to oranges. While you can be tactically right, you can't be statistically right (which is what matters here): there's no way the "average you" can go against the general flow of traffic. Things get more difficult, even at the individual "you" level, once you happen to be married.
"Actually, loans in general are the reason housing prices are so unreasonable"
Completely right, and the reason why universal basic income would be such a terrible idea.
"This still happens to this day in every country where people don't take out mortgages"
And where's that country where people don't take a mortage to buy their home, may I know?
"Move to a place that doesn't have insanely high cost of living"
Again, something impossible at the average level, even more impossible when you are married, in a world where the two members of a couple need to work to make ends meet. The most you can get at is an eternal game of cat-and-mouse but then, money moves much more quickly and with less pain than people, so it's a game people is doomed to lose.
"Where you live paycheck to paycheck in New York, San Francisco, or LA, you won't have to do that in any city that is at right around 100 on the cost of living index"
I don't live in USA but then, I moved to my country's "capital city" which also can be compared like "New York / everywhere else". Do you think I moved just for fun? Yes, cost of living at my native town is quite lower than that of capital city but, then, I can make a meagre income at capital city that at least allows me living paycheck to paycheck; my native town is absolutely cheaper, but relatively more expensive, since I wasn't able to take home even a paycheck to paycheck income there.
If you think of it that's *exactly* why cost of living at capital city is higher. Again, what might be a solution for yourself, doesn't and can't scalate.
"The value of a company is calculated on the short term profit of the company, not on the investment in future development [...] then I'd have to give you a negative score on your understanding of accounting and finance"
No, I think I will have to give *you* a negative score on your understanding of accounting and finance. Just like in the case of living wages, money can move more quickly than -in this case, corporate strategies, which means jumping ships becomes a sustainable strategy for investors. That even was almost a "sport" back in the eighties: you can invest on dismantling a company, grab the short term profits (short term being days/weeks/months, not seconds, as it is today), and then move your money to the next company. Rinse and repeat and you'll get a whole trade market thinking about their next quarter at best because, otherwise, you won't get a dime of traders' money.
"If Apple sold off their iphone business segment to raise their short term profit, do you really think the value of their stock would increase in the short term, at all?"
It, of course, would depend on those pesky little details, but that's exactly what happened when Nokia sold their phone business unit, so yes, that can be not only thought, but backed with data from real world.
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right you are.
There was a sharp disconnect in the economy start in around 1972 when worker's wages suddenly (and permanently) became completely disconnected from productivity, which it had tracked for decades. At that time the oldest boomers were still in the 20s. The rigging of the economy for the benefit of corporation and the plutocracy was well established by the early 1980s, this was done by men who were all from that so-called "Greatest Generation". Things were rigged against the boomers from the time they entered the job market.
Re:Nope, it was boomers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Nope, it was boomers (Score:4, Insightful)
Milton Friedman was a brilliant economist, the same can't be said of you if you actually think he could cause this even if he tried. What people like yourself always fail to comprehend is why the US doesn't have that kind of economy anymore, or why we even had it in the first place, why it isn't coming back, and why it was a total fluke to begin with.
It's very simple: Germany started two world wars, which caused European countries to blow up each other's infrastructure, and later, after being pulled into a war we didn't ask for, the US had to cause further destruction. Japan decided to destroy Asia's infrastructure, then they thought they could destroy our navy, but it didn't work, and so in order for us to eliminate their offensive capability we had to carpetbomb all of their manufacturing capability. And then USSR simply made the economic blunder of the millennium: they adopted communism.
What all of this lead up to was that now the rest of the world was hopelessly dependent upon us since we were the only country left with a large scale infrastructure to build what they needed. That's what created all of those jobs that are now gone. Eventually the rest of the world (except Russia after the fall of the USSR, as well as the Warsaw pact countries who were forced into communism) had a competent infrastructure, and since they were still poor, they could offer labor services at a lower price. So guess what happens? We start seeing those jobs go away, and they won't ever return. Instead we got something far better: A very high tech, high skilled economy, and our median income is presently the highest ever at $59k. This means that half of the country makes that amount or higher.
So your can stop pretending you know economics, and you can stop trying to blame somebody for this, let alone pin it on one economist for no particular reason.
Re: Nope, it was boomers (Score:5, Insightful)
WW2 ended in 1945. In the 1950's, Germany was already the second largest economy. A decimated, war torn country with no industry doesn't give you the second largest economy in the world. Germany's rebuilding took very little time considering the impact of the war, and the drain of intellectual value foisted on them by the US and UK governments; it took years, not decades.
Japan took that second spot in 1968. That's 23 years to rebuild everything they lost, and become the second largest economy in the world. Between 1955 and 1973, they averaged 9% growth per year. That would be phenomenal for any country, much less one recovering from the impact of the war.
This notion that US industries simply had no competition for decades is simply very wrong, and even a brief look at actual history shows that.
Coming out of WW2, we gave veterans the GI Bill. Hundreds of thousands of people could now go to college who would never have been able to without that assistance. In 1956 the US would start the interstate highway system, which would be critical to moving goods around (and fundamentally change our entire commercial supply system). And in 1961, Kennedy would give the country a direction with a decree to go to the moon.
We had the newly educated masses, the means for transportation, and a path forward. The innovation to come from that in electronics, material science, and miniaturization is what propelled the advances that most people today take for granted, everything from telecommunications to food preservation.
Re: (Score:3)
WW2 ended in 1945. In the 1950's, Germany was already the second largest economy. A decimated, war torn country with no industry doesn't give you the second largest economy in the world. Germany's rebuilding took very little time considering the impact of the war, and the drain of intellectual value foisted on them by the US and UK governments; it took years, not decades.
Your very first assertion started out factually incorrect, so you're failing right out of the gate here. Germany was never at any point the second largest economy after the war, that was without a doubt the USSR. Germany's position kept going down from distant third until the noughties, where it remains at 5th, just behind India. More to my point here, you know the UK and France were still dismantling Germany's heavy industry until 1950s, right? And yes, Germany's economy did recover quickly, but primarily
Re: Nope, it was boomers (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a baby boomer, but if the summary given is accurate, this whole book is full of more B.S. than even Piketty was pitching.
Baby boomers aren't much for deregulation and the other statistics given are just as stupid. One example: The U.S. has the third-highest poverty rate? Not in any absolute sense. If you use the World Bank's poverty threshold of $1.90/day PPP [wikipedia.org], basically nobody in the U.S. is under the poverty rate unless they refuse any help at all from anyone. If you take the U.S. centric threshold of household poverty, then you can be poor in the U.S. and still 2.5 times as rich as the median world household.
You need the lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
It's you who needs a lesson. Reaganomics is what ruined America. He cut the top tier tax rate from 72% to 23% and raised taxes three times on the middle class, under the name of trickle down.
The tax situation didn't "ruin" America, and this is where you get retarded. The top tier effective tax rate never was 72%, and it certainly wasn't 90% that idiots like you think it was. There were so many tax loopholes and deductions that it was insane, and the highest effective tax rate was about 42%. By the end of Reagan's term, this didn't change much.
A 72% or above effective tax rate would cost the economy much more than it would return. There's a little concept we refer to as the Laffer Curve. It's no
Re: (Score:3)
Re:There are lots of ways to play that game. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember the Boomers in the sixties and seventies and they were spoiled children then.
If they were spoiled children isn't that the fault of the upposedly wonderful prior generation?
Re: (Score:3)
Letters from my GGGfathers would call you not only a liar, but a dupe. Your knowledge of actual history somehow permits you to make such a statement using the Ayn Rand lens of life, which is a zero-sum observation.
Although the US-UK affinity is pretty unholy, there were lots of reasons to enter WWI. And bankrupting the Russians was the way to crack the Berlin Wall, perhaps the only wise thing R Reagan ever did.
Brill is usually right. (Score:2, Funny)
The problem with Brill is that 90% of the population can't keep up with him or argue with his points. This is likely almost entirely correct and truthful with plenty of support work to make a strong cogent set of arguments (as strong as can be expected of something outside of science.)
I'm not sure of the practicality of these academic exercises when something for the masses is likely needed.
"The Century of the Self" documentary is amazingly good considering it doesn't have the ability to be dense like a bo
Parent has some good points...but (Score:3)
It's dead simple to find proof it was about slavery; they stated it openly and on the record many times. Economics was the driver behind slavery; it is for many things... There are always multiple factors involved, but the institution of slavery was by far the largest factor and the reasons for slavery is beside the point...why they needed to believe in slavery is breaking things down; you can always do that and just keep going as far as you'd like. This is often a tactic to divert attention by focusing on
Re:no, the Lincoln voters did (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about the Civil War to dispute it.
Na, just kidding.
South Carolina [battlefields.org]
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
Mississippi [civilwar.org]
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin
Louisiana [archive.org]
As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.
Alabama [archive.org]
Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized