The New York Times describes the plight of southern Europe’s “doomed generation”; young people flush with the finest credentials who can’t find a paying job. “Francesca Esposito has a law degree and a master’s and speaks five languages. She recently quit her unpaid job for Italy’s social security administration.” Esposito was working pro bono for old people, who she believed were squatting on the jobs that the young should have.
She not only worked for free on behalf of the nation’s elderly, who have generally crowded out the young for jobs, but her efforts there did not even apply to her own pension. …
AdvertisementThe outrage of the young has erupted, sometimes violently, on the streets of Greece and Italy in recent weeks, as students and more radical anarchists protest not only specific austerity measures in flattened economies but a rising reality in Southern Europe: People like Ms. Esposito feel increasingly shut out of their own futures. Experts warn of volatility in state finances and the broader society as the most highly educated generation in the history of the Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets.
The phrase “no American is ever made better off by pulling a fellow American down, and every American is made better off whenever any one of us is made better off. A rising tide raises all boats,” once derided as the hallmark of simplistic American trickle down economics, may embody some wisdom after all. At least in comparison to a low growth, redistributive economy which is running out of stuff to redistribute.
Even before the economic crisis hit, Southern Europe was not an easy place to forge a career. Low growth and a corrosive lack of meritocracy have long posed challenges to finding a job in Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Today, with the added sting of austerity, more people are left fighting over fewer opportunities. It is a zero-sum game that inevitably pits younger workers struggling to enter the labor market against older ones already occupying precious slots.
Europeans are now seeking greener pastures, in places like Costa Rica. One lady, fed up with earning the princely sum of $791 a month as a children’s drama teacher, is going to teach in Central America. “What we have is a Ponzi scheme,” said Lawrence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University and an expert in fiscal policy.
He said that pay-as-you-go social security and health care were a looming fiscal disaster in Southern Europe and beyond. “If these fertility rates continue through time, you won’t have Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Portuguese or Russians,” he said. “I imagine the Chinese will just move into Southern Europe.”
He might as well have been talking about American entitlements, like Social Security, whose chief shortcoming, in the view of some, is that it is not as extensive as those Europeans enjoy. Give it time and Hope and Change will upgrade it to European standards. Or maybe not. The welfare state is coming face to face with the problem of how to fund its generous entitlement system with shrinking numbers of highly credentialed service workers who can’t find jobs.
It’s all our fault, of course. If only we had not inflicted that damn Pox Americana on them. But the blame lies elsewhere, Bruno. Those soft Mediterranean nights have made you …soft. And very soon the northern rim of the Mediterranean will look exactly llke the southern rim, minarets and all.
Well the demographics for China aren’t so hot. The draconian enforcement of the one child per family has had an unitended consequence the population has lots of old people and not enough young ones. China may not be filling up any empty spaces anywhere for a while.
I have the feeling that there is going to be a self limiting factor for migrants to Europe. A pretty good number of them went there to take advantage of the “social benefits” when the money runs out for those why leave some Northern African hell hole for a place just like it? There is movement in the Northern European countries to close out immigration loopholes and deny benefits to those there that aren’t “contributing.” I’m not holding my breath though.
Perhaps if the Congress really puts the screws to them the Foreign Service will start doing the job they buried when they ditched the old US Information Service. They can start talking up America. Can you imagine a full bore campaign, devoid of any hint of post-modern-irony, that promotes the American way? Think of Posters, Billboards and full page ads, “Life Love Liberty” or “You tried everything else. Why not try Capitalism?” or “Tired of failure? Why not try success?” or even “Don’t be a loser. Freedom works.”
Not sure if its really a problem for Spain and Portugal – both have large scale immigration from Latin America. I don’t really see the issues you are referring to in Europe. American media generally blows things out of proportion. An example is Portugals debt. Have you ever compared it to the US debt – but to make it comparable you need to add State, Federal and social security, etc. Um – who has the debt problem then?
The decisive missing element is a positive work ethic. The next generation in Europe have watched their parents enjoy receiving benefits without a work ethic; naturally, they will want the same. Trouble is, since WWII, for each decade that French workers out-performed American workers, the Americans out-produced the French by twice as many decades. If the 2/1 trend holds, half of all French workers will be below the American poverty line by the end of this decade.
It is not just a demographic crunch that is going to eviscerate post-industrial Europe. Nor is it just the entitlement states’ inefficiencies that will slow European prosperity to a crawl. Nor is it just the debilitating influence of post-modernism philsophy which will hold Europeans back. It is their lack of a work ethic which will tell the tale. Add up all four sociological trends and you have an entire generation in Europe blind-sided as to how they became so poor so fast: It has very little to do with older workers deperately holding on to proven jobs.
Our American younger generation, to the extent that it has a positive work ethic, will do just fine in finding work. But to the extent that they have adopted European post-modernist values, their lack of a work ethic will signal for them what it has signalled for European youth: No growth, no prosperity, no jobs, and half of the entire up-coming generation working below some other country’s (Germany’s? Japan’s? China’s?) poverty line.
I am sure there is a huge demand for drama teachers for children in Costa Rica. The sky is the limit for qualified teachers.LOL
Blast -
Those billboards are a neat idea. But I think they would be every bit as welcome and accepted as billboards of evangelical devotions to Christ would go over in Riyadd, Medina, and Yemen.
And I think the ones whose “religious” sensibilities would be so offended by such words would be equally likely to react violently in both cases. Be they Islamic radicals or European socialists, they will savagely defend the sanctity of their valiant ship against all who speak against it…. as the water fills the engine room and starts to flow under the door to the bridge.
Everybody wants to be a drama teacher or a gov’t bureaucrat. Nobody wants to be a plumber or a carpenter, machinist or the like. Too messy, and you have to do something besides talk or type. Just as well, since those jobs are being outsourced to Asia en masse when possible, and the plumbing and carpenting is being done by insourced workers.
There are many educated people who don’t really know how to do much of anything that doesn’t involve Excel spreadsheets or powerpoint presentations. Other than changing a lightbulb or cutting their grass they have real trouble. They are about to find out that the new world will have limited need for their services, and that won’t be pretty.
National wealth is totally dependent on making THINGS, or directly providing services that allow those things to be made. When oil field workers are extracting energy, machinists are making auto parts, or carpenters are building houses, real tangible wealth is created.
Moving numbers around on spreadsheets, while necessary to a degree, doesn’t produce one cent of wealth. Sure, there’s a need for office types to provide the necessary data so everyone can see they’re on track, but this type of job has flooded the market. Much of the growth has been driven by the myriad Gov’t regulations that must be adhered to.
This used to be known as overhead, and was something to be kept to the bare minimum necessary. Now it seems it’s the main component of many Corps, and of course almost the entire Federal Government is one gigantic overhead pool. As we deconstruct the Federal Government a lot of these jobs are going to go away.
The actual productive jobs are moving overseas in droves, and in the cases where they can’t be we’ve just decided to allow a flood of illegal workers to come in to do those jobs and keep the labor costs down. This has to stop, or we’ll have to figure out a way to deal with a very large percentage of our people who are unemployable.
The bottom line for the lady who emigrated to Costa Rica; a hundred Child Drama Teachers will be worth the same as a single competent car mechanic in the new world. What these poorly trained people are going to do for a living is beyond me, but the good times are ending, and they’d better be able to do something productive if they want to survive in the future.
“Europe, as Mark Steyn has long been pointing out, is in a demographic death spiral. But the politicians at the helm aren’t going to recover from the stall any time soon.”
Which is why Europe is now “Eurabia.” The only ethnic group that is rapidly growing in terms of both immigration numbers AND births are Muslims. Plain and simple, the Muslims don’t have to take over Europe by force, they just have to wait a few years and their sheer numbers will make them the dominant force in Europe. They will simply “out birth” the Europeans and take over.
The same will probably happen here in the United States with hispanics, probably Mexicans and Central Americans, although it will take longer. And this is the future Obama wants for us. That’s what makes Obama so despicable. Because of his Socialist upbringing, he wants the United States to follow the European model of the Social-Welfare state, even though it is an economic disaster. No problem for Obama, though. Redistribution is the key to him and, as long as he achieves it, no matter that the whole country will bankrupt in the process. This guy really, really, needs to be replaced in 2012, before we all go broke permanently.
DTMACK:
‘they also surf who only stnad on waves’
Obscure Mad Magazine reference there. DT, If I sat down and wrote, say, a new operating system for a smartphone, would you also deride my talking and typing? For that’s all you would see…
And you would claim I was not productive, yes? That argument went out with feudal Japan, dude.
It’s not just Obama, it didn’t start with him, and things aren’t going to magically change once he’s out of office. This whole thing has been in the works for years, the GOP is at least as complicit as the DEMS, with the main goal being the maximization of profit and the making of labor into a commodity. Once something becomes a commodity it’s purchase price goes way down. That’s why branding is so important to our corporations. If soap is just soap people buy on price alone. If a machinist in Thailand can do the same basic job as one in the US at one tenth the price, then who gets the job?
Most people say that the solution is retraining people to fill the jobs that will be available in the future. I’ve got news for you, many who could provide good value to the economy by working an assembly line, or running a machine, or building a house will not be able to grasp the things they’ll need to get retrained. And many are older so their prospects are very limited even if they have the ability.
We, the people of the USA, are the marks in this game, and we don’t even realize it. We think the GOP is going to do something to change things, but they won’t, because they’re up to their necks in things as they are. A nation that cannot provide meaningful employment for a large part of their population is in serious trouble, and that’s where we’re heading right now.
I’m not sure what the answer to this is. Protectionism probably causes more problems than it solves, but we can at least stop the flood of illiegal immigrants driving down the wages of American workers. We can elect people, regardless of party, who are looking out for the interests of the people in this country, rather than the Corporate interests. When they coincide, fine. When they don’t, we need our reps on our side.
We can get the Gov’t out of the way as much as possible, cut useless regulations, shut down useless make work agencies, and have the Federal Government focus on the things they should be, like defending the country from aggression and making sure a bunch of crap shooters on Wall Street are not making up new games to fleece the public. We need to have some mechanism whereby risk and reward are intertwined, or at the very least that risk is truly stated. How many of the heads of the credit ratings agencies that rated all of these mortgage backed securities at AAA are in jail or under indictment now?
The Tea parties are a start, but people need to be very clear eyed when they look at things, and I don’t see that happening yet. When I see Wall Mart, for instance, I see the retail arm of China Inc. That doesn’t necessarily mean WM should be demonized, but we should see it for what it is. I doubt if many here would agree with me on that, or most of what else I’ve posted.
Some of the things described by the NYT are right, but others are way out of proportions.
For example, Italy government have a large debit, but Italian people have conspicuous savings. Italy is not Greece.
The article is wrote by a leftist (or economic illiterate) as at some point it blame the problems of the young generations to the working elderly. The problem is the reverse. Perfectly able people is forced to retire (on the public dime) and the costs are transfered to the working people. So employers are not keen to employ people that, then, it is near impossible to fire for any reason.
The younger generations were promised a job at the level of their educations, so they spend years in schools and universities, where then there was nothing. At the same time 20.000 nurses jobs go unclaimed nationwide. And we know that there will not be enough nurses and physician because they botched the planning, albeit we have near the double than in the US (per capita). We are full of people with psychology, history, letters, law, political sciences degrees doing menial jobs.
The growth of parties like “Lega Nord” (25% in the North of Italy) and PDL (Berlusconi) is because people want and need reforms to be able to compete. The north of Italy would eat alive the competition, if not burdened with the weight of supporting the always poor and in need south and the resistance to innovations of the leftists centralist bureaucrats and lawmakers.
Currently the government is shedding as much as public employees as possible without firing them. Simply they are outsourcing as much as they can and hiring 1 every 10 people retiring (apart from critical positions like nurses, physicians, and likes). They are doing this from 2001 (Berlusconi), so now the government is leaner and will be more leaner.
Bill Johnson
What you are describing is what I described as “directly providing services that allow those things to be made”. There are many types of activities that involve ” Talking and Typing” that do provide value to the economy, and you can’t hold the product in your hand. I realize that.
I configure network components for a living, and just about all I do is talk and type (and occasionally connect some cables or mount some equipment in a rack). But once the service is in place it allows others to do their job more efficiently, thus adding value. Or at least I like to tell myself that. In many cases it probably just allows people to do thing more efficiently that shouldn’t be being done in the first place.
My point is that there are many people doing jobs that do not add value – maybe some would consider mine one of those, so be it. To repeat, “National wealth is totally dependent on making THINGS, or directly providing services that allow those things to be made.”
Improvements in communications technologies are obviously something that adds value to an economy, just as improvements to roads did and still do. But it’s what moves across the roads (cyber or real) that is what counts. The roads facilitiate commerce, and better roads make it even easier and cheaper, but the commerce is the end result.
I’ll stick with that, even if it relegates me to the olden days of Feudal Japan.
I’m wondering what a slightly used U.S. president will do after he leaves the White House. Some country could really use a retired U.S. president as their dictator. Because you know, if he stays in the U.S., he’ll just clog up traffic with his motorcade day after day, going to all his parties and golfing.
Just read an article on the American Boomers who are reaching retirement age and discovering they are not ready yet.
An example was a man in Vero Beach, 61 years old, who lost his $100k/year job and figures he will have to go on Social Security as soon as he hits 62. He has $5K in savings and lives in an apartment. His answer is that he will just have to go on working, the immediate problem being that he is unemployed with no real prospects for former sod salesman.
So the answer for at least 40% of them is “work till they drop” – in an economy in which work for anyone is scarce. Needless to say, they don’t compete well against the young.
The result is that 3 out of 4 people are signing up for SS payments as soon as they hit 62. And that while 2 out of 3 in the 55 to 64 group are still paying a mortgage, with a median debt of $85K.
And of course those poor folks who figured they would sell their homes for a huge gain and retire to a little condo are finding that when there are 15K homes sitting around empty in one county alone that plan has its flaws.
Bill Johnson #10:
I think Dtmack’s point is that there is only so much of that work out there, just like there are just so many jobs available for drama teachers. A few years back at our office we received a call almost every day from an outfit trying to sell us a new website. We told them each time that (a). we already had one and (b) all that was handed by the corporate HQ in California. Their response was to become more and more strident “You need a BETTER website!”
In 1992 my college economics professor warned this was coming. He explained how politicians had set up a system that in the beginning robbed a few to buy votes from others. Losing the votes of the few were offset by those purchased by the loot. Future politicians kept this going, steadily expanding the numbers getting handouts. However, the number of those providing the loot, business and the “rich,” were slowly squeezed out of existence or reduced to the dole themselves. Eventually the system would run out of loot to steal and it would collapse leaving a vast number of destitute people and a tiny number holding most of the remaining wealth.
He urged the students to vote for candidates who would reform the system, something that should have been started in the 1960′s. The longer it went on the worse it would get and the harder the fix. I think of a class of 30, maybe 3 or 4 were actually listening to him. The rest were sleeping or sharing stories of the previous night’s (midweek) drunked party and how they were doing it again that night as well.
This professor died a few years after that class. Kind of a good thing he did so he missed the current financial crisis, which he also predicted, how welfare has reached up into the middle classes, socialized medicine, etc. Pity when people who can see clearly are ignored.
“as the most highly educated generation in the history of the Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets”
This word “education” gets tossed about too casually. How many of these people are really educated, in the truest sense of the word? I’m guessing that most of them (just like here in the U.S.) are shallowly schooled in a couple of fields but are not educated in the classics or languages or math or science. They are in the academic areas where indoctrination has taken over for true education (anything not math or science, these days) and have no real skills.
We do not need any more people who majored in Women’s English Lit (because dead white males are bad, m’kay?), or early childhood development (why don’t you just have children?), or politically correct poli-sci or public policy (look at most of our political/bureaucrat class). These “educated” people are worse than useless, they are a detriment. What we need is more TRAINING so that people can perform a useful task. And for education to be just that – education, in the true Western tradition. This transition will be difficult, because the education industry has, for the past fifty years, done the most brilliant marketing of any industry in the history of our species, by getting every urban and suburban mommy to believe that if all their kids don’t go to college they are a failure as a mommy.
That will take some undoing, I’m afraid.
“One lady, fed up with earning the princely sum of $791 a month as a children’s drama teacher, is going to teach in Central America.”
A young woman, doing this, leaving her nation, to seek comfort and fortune and status.
How many kids of her own does she have?
The only civilizations that survive will have one characteristic at minimum. Every woman who is fertile will have at least three kids in a stable marriage.
All other civilizations are going extinct, whether they admit it to themselves or not.
Define irony….anarchists rioting over cut backs in government services .
The US is barely better off.
This is more a comparison of how the Italian economy has been for fifty years and the US, than anything new.
However, things are worse for us all now. Didn’t we discuss here “The Ant Tribe” article in NYTimes a couple of weeks ago, bemoaning how their college-educated youth was also remaining unemployed?
WORLDWIDE we just don’t need about half of our college-educated population in order to produce all the food and goods of our modern world.
Immense problem, but certainly not unique to Europe, and I would argue barely any different here since Feb 2008, and maybe more like since Feb 2001, and only somewhat obscured since 1991. But eventually, the truth will out.
Ant Tribe bemoaning China’s college-educated youth
Why does a person pay another to do something? Some things are obvious. Most people nowadays cannot grow their own food or build their own houses. But if a person is wealthy enough, he will pay another to cook, clean, teach him something, cut his hair. People with no money will do all of those things themselves and maybe live with broken air conditioners. In wealthy countries, people even pay huge sums to others who pretend to protect society from the people paying the huge sums, assuming their wealth is eternal.
Seems to me it is a delicate balancing act that can go haywire globally rather quickly
I’m afraid we might be entering a new dark age. And governments are fueling it. Government ought to provide a legal framework, protect basic rights and provide public safety, period. Instead, governments all over the world suck massive amounts of wealth out of the private sectors and hand it to beaurocrats and cronies who provide no useful services whatsoever. This can’t be good for any economy.
And at the same time, you have 50% or more of many populations determined to live for free on what others create. Our Marxist overlords recognized over a century ago that encouraging this system can quickly drive entire populations into serfdom, to the benefit of the overlords.
This is not a formula that bodes well for civilization. We all assume the disaster will come slowly. But it can happen in a flash.
Times they are a’changing. Well, the Obomination promised us…..
Factory jobs are done, Robots will be working on the assembly line. Humans will be fixing and programming them. Expert systems will ‘man’ the accounting department. Maybe Legal too. Humans will be doing work that calls for creative ability. Everybody else will work a 20 hour week servicing the machines.
Islamic populations are expanding for 2 reasons, 1 is that there are no womens rights there, NO universal sufferage among Muslims. 2 is we are feeding them. Muslims don’t have the technology to feed themselves. Stop the OIL for Food trade and about 1/4 of Islam starves. So the picture isn’t so rosey for Islam either.
The only solution is catastrophe. Because only a catastrophe has the chance of ridding the next generations of the entitlement delusion. Once that delusion is removed people will not only relearn being grateful for the basics, they will return to religious belief and begin to bear children at replacement levels.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Balance-of-Trade.aspx?Symbol=ITL
“Italy reported a balance of trade deficit equivalent to 3187 Million EUR in September of 2010. Italy’s major exports are food, clothing, precision machinery, motor vehicles, chemicals and electric goods. Italy imports mainly engineering products, chemicals, transport equipment, energy products, minerals, textiles and clothing; automobiles, electronics, food, beverages and tobacco.”
Italy had a trade deficit of 3.187 Billion Euro ($4.3 Billion US) in one month. And they wonder where the jobs are!
Of course, the US, UK and many other jurisdictions are in the same boat. Our Political Cliques de-industrialized, and now we have high unemployment, trade deficits, and inadequate tax revenue. But think of all the CO2 we do not produce!
The solution for OECD countries is obvious — re-industrialization, with restructured governments which do fewer things, and do them much better. And live within their means.
I am an optimist. The human race will get there. But there will be many tears along the way.
#17
Instapundit has been posting about the “education bubble” for some time now. The bubble is specifically that the value of education, in future earnings, has been outpaced by the cost, at least for most fields. Leaving more and more students with debts they cannot repay, or get out from under. Eventually the clientele must wake up a realize they’re being scammed.
An old sci-fi idea was: what happens when automation becomes so advanced that we only need a small percentage of the population to actually work? The time is now arriving. In the old sci-fi this was viewed as a utopia. IMO, knowing human nature, this is instead going to be a dystopia.
Fact is, it is not that we have too few plumbers/electricians/tool handlers and too many thought workers. At least not in the USA. The fact is that we have “surplus to requirements” population. And that will continue to be the case. We really only need about 10% of the population to provide us all everything we need, and another 40% to provide us with everything we want. And the want category needs fewer and fewer workers every day.
Libertyship46 (9),
That seems to be the way things are headed, but: will there be any “there” there when they do?
Does this indicate that we are all drama teachers….now? The only way that I will be able to stop working before I stop breathing is if the “stupid tax” I occasionally pay, pays off. Big megamillions jackpot tomorrow night. I suppose the odds are slightly better of landing a drama teaching job in Costa Rica.
“This is not a formula that bodes well for civilization. We all assume the disaster will come slowly. But it can happen in a flash.”
That flash is actually the primer being ignited in the pan. Conditions have been right for a while. There just has been no spark to ignite the powder barrel we are sitting on. Not sure why. I hope it is because the powers that be are real good at finding and stamping out sparks. I fear we just might be lucky.
24. ricpic, Amen! Really there is no way out without there being a “catastrophic” event, this event will have to be a “Government” changer, one that allows for a rebuilding of the laws and rules.
no mo uro #17 wrote:
I’m guessing that most of them (just like here in the U.S.) are shallowly schooled in a couple of fields but are not educated in the classics or languages or math or science.
The young Italian lady featured in the NYT article is fluent in 5 languages. As “shallow” as present European schooling may be compared to say, 100 years ago, it is still a damn sight better than our public school system, as shown by international rankings in math and science.
I’m willing to grant that. The tragic thing is that because of demographics the massive burdens and costs of the Euro social state crushing them – it doesn’t matter how good their educational system is. You can speak 5 or 6 languages (and many Europeans do), have great math and science abilities, but if you’re competing against 12 other people with the same education and abilities and there are only 3 slots open – well, that’s when you start to think about emigrating. The less talented, lazier types will be content to live on the dole until it runs out and then they’ll throw a temper tantrum, raging in the streets against “them.”
25 – Kinuachdrach. Thank you for a spot of optimism. I am a daily reader of this post but sometimes I am overwhelmed by the doom and gloom that pervades the comment section. I saw an interesting film – What the Bleep Do We know – that puts forth the idea that what we think is what we will achieve – whether negaative or positive – and that Quantum Physics supports this theory.
Maybe I’m just a fool but I believe it.
ss @ 27: what he says.
In such a situation, then it may well be incumbent on the fed to print money and hand it out to the other 50% of the population, and doing so will be harmless, will not cause inflation.
I believe Robert Silverberg, among others, used to write about these scenarios, much in the imagination circa 1960s and even earlier. You had to get a beggar’s license, and working citizens were required to contribute when asked. Stuff like that.
Unfortunately most of these did seem to turn into dystopias.
If we’re going to do better, we need (a) some financial leaders who will acknowledge the situation, and (b) some massively creative thinking, and (c) some action. I’d say that (a) is barely possible, (b) and (c) are science fiction, to expect from the federal government.
The notion that women should aspire to get a law degree, learn several more languages and help the elderly instead of popping out babies sure was good for the economy, wasn’t it.
Donna V
Another critical factor is the provincialism of European labor mobility. Er, IMMOBILITY.
If you don’t find employment within commuting distance from your home — in Europe — lot’s of luck getting ANY job.
With the exception of some government jobs and American firms in Europe, all hiring is done within the local community — outsiders be damned.
As one northern – highly educated – German lass put it to me: Bavaria is NOT Germany.
( Most German-Americans come from Southwestern Germany and no where else. Most Poles and Lithuanians came from the same patch of ground split by Russia and Germany up near the Baltic. Southern/Sicilian Italians made the trip, not so the population up north. The lack of employment prospects in ALL of these areas caused them to ‘job hunt’ in America. As for the Jews, see Fiddler on the Roof.
This is ONE factor in why Europeans look down upon American culture: from their perspective we’re a hive of scum and villainy — rejects all. And yet the rejects are running the whole show!)
For all of her language command, the poor over-educated-for-the-labor-market gal is joined by feminine millions. Even in MY college daze, the gals were over concentrated in ‘courses’ that were a fulsome waste of time.
Less a lecture — more as a minor minion holding court — pap would be slung as insight. Entire lectures could go by without content. Straight out of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: Polonius the ultimate wind bag.
—–
It is of note that Britain is FINALLY attacking this staggering waste of humanity by imposing some market discipline: students tuitions for such frivolous ‘majors’ have been reset. The professors/ despots involved are, no doubt, behind the student rage campaign. Obviously, most ‘classes’ will empty out if the students have to carry any of the freight.
Wisely, tuitions for REAL instruction are not changed.
Academe is a hyper-bubble that needs to be popped. It’s as bad as the medical bubble and the real estate bubble. The only thing they have in common is massive government interventions/Central Planning and MSM myth making.
The over arching myth being that a degree is a degree and that having one means you’ve ‘arrived’ and are ‘entitled’ to above average wages.
For the degrees we are discussing, wages are BELOW average. Not uncommonly, they are zero. One is expected to work 40 hrs, gratis, like say, naive political campaign workers.
I agree with comments 25 and 33, as I don’t see gloom, only a course correction to meet today’s reality.
Predictions are always just predictions. The only one I encountered that was spot-on was Marshall McLuhan’s electronic revolution. He had studied the effects of previous technologies on culture, and in the mid-60′s wrote about the ‘Global Village’, the instant communications we now have, and many other changes that his imagination foresaw. He said the electronic age would transform every institution, just as Gutenberg’s printing press and the industrial revolution both did. His future was not that of doom and gloom, but of enabling change.
The future is how you envision it to a large extent; if you think you are beaten, you are, etc.
This new age promises freedom to live outside crowded cities, already supported by e-conferences uniting organizations spread across vast distances and off-shore call centers. Every child can have a tutor tailored to that individual to maximize his learning in ways that are fun. There is a world of educational development taking place now to support such. My area is already served by a charter online school, grades 4-12. These are just two examples among a multitude. Just about every legacy from the industrial revolution is undergoing change, many for the betterment of us all.
The people who take advantage of new technology will be winners. There are a lot of better moustraps out there waiting on someone with imagination and a positive attitude about the world as it is today to invent them.
This article from yesterday’s NYT focuses on the pension for public workers issue, but many of the comments respond to the larger issues of wealth distribution, the demise of the American worker, and the culpability of government in caving in to the unions and the taxpayers at the same time by paying out more to government workers and their pensions while giving out tax cuts and underfunding pension plans. The rich and the under/enemployed are attacking one of the last remnants of the middle class in the government worker class. Overall, it re-enforces my view that we have to cut spending and raise taxes, even on some previously tax-free state pensions. The top 1%, even though they pay a disproportionate share of taxes, really have separated themselves from the other 99% in their overall wealth. We are trying to lure them into hiring by lowering their taxes and so far it is not working.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/business/02showdown.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2
Stoicheon #23:
Old joke:
One day the manager of a factory calls everyone together and announces that the factory will be going to total automation. But no one would lose their jobs or have any reduction in pay. Everyone would retrained and required to come to the factory to service the automated equipment, and that would require them to come to work only on Wednesdays. The other days of the week their time would be their own. “So you see, starting next month you will only be required to come to work on Wednesdays.”
And from the back of the crowd comes an angry shout “What! EVERY Wednesday?”
That is a joke from the 60’s, and today, when it is almost a reality, the “every Wednesday” response sounds all too real. In the mid-90’s the UAW went on strike because the Big 3 were using overtime instead of hiring additional workers: a union striking for the members to make less money and the Union to collect more dues. UPS did the same thing in that timeframe. Just last year Boeing workers in Washington state went on strike – because the company had decided to move more of its assembly operations to South Carolina in order to get away from the unions.
Ultimately, we will wind up with something like the dark ages. Before the 20th century it was normal to work until you died. A very small percentage owned most(all?) the wealth and self styled elites ran everything.
America changed all that. Or rather the Constitution did. So the question is “Does America adapt to the social conditions it created or does it become a blip in histories long dreary timeline? That is up to us, After all, we are Americans. Our society is based on every citizen controlling his own destiny.
So long as we do that, we’ll be OK. Let the government control our destiny and we will be like the rest of the world. That’s not OK.
Add to the youth trying to find a job in a society that doesn’t tax them into poverty the following:
- Survivalists escaping “fascist” america
- Pensioners looking for a low cost place to stretch their fixed incomes
- Surgery shoppers looking for low cost medical care
- Entrepreneurs looking to start businesses in low tax and low regulation areas
Looks like this could be a growth market!
“What we have is a Ponzi scheme,” said Lawrence Kotlikoff…
Socialism is built upon Marxist principles – and yes – Marxism is a Ponzi scheme where the tax-eaters are in economic class struggle against the tax-payers. Like the Pigs of Animal Farm, the self-serving, tax-eating Marxist ruling class “manages” this struggle in the name of economic equality. Never mind that the Marxist managers are a superior class possessing superior rights and superiority before law. Never mind that the Marxist managers, in Orwellian fashion, end up superior in economic outcome – the not-to-be-equalized equalizers.
“The proletariat (labor-challenged, non-disabled, tax-eating class) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital (property) from the bourgeoisie (laboring, tax-paying middle class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (self-serving, tax-eating Marxist Government)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic (unequal) inroads on the rights of property.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Marxist Socialism is immoral because it violates natural law where Marxist-Socialist government possesses the individual’s God-given right to the fruit of his/her own labor in pursuit of happiness. Marxists, along with their pet proletariat class, possess a State-given right to the fruit of someone else’s labor in pursuit of happiness – at the expense of the laboring middle class which possesses an inferior State-given right to their fuit of labor in pursuit of happiness. Marxist Socialism is a big lie because the Marxists are, as George Orwell pointed out in Animal Farm, “more equal than others.” The grand Marxist “economic equality” lie was also pointed out in Orwell’s “1984.”
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” (Communist Manifesto) meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it (The Socialist Party of Oceania) was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc (Socialist Principles of Oceania), which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
On an advertisement “Open Doors with a Doctorate” at the Council of Graduate Schools web site, there is a graph that shows how the number of PhD’s earned by men since 1969 has stayed stable for the past forty years. If anything, the number of doctorates earned by men dipped between 1975 and 2005.
So, where’s the bubble? Women with doctorates. The number of doctorates earned by women has steadily increased for the past forty years while doctorates for men have stagnated. In 1969, women earned fewer than 15% of the doctorates. Today, women earn a majority of the doctorates.
The Council of Graduate Schools estimates an increase in the number of men with PhD’s and slowed growth in the number of women with PhD’s. I disagree with that outlook. I think the number of female doctorates will continue to increase and the number of male doctorates will continue to stagnate, with the effect that 60% of the Americans with PhD’s will be women by 2025.
Whenever the workforce of a profession becomes 60-70% female, its social status and earning potential typically goes down – just look at the status of medical doctors in Russia as opposed to the United States. So, if these trends continue (as I think they will), university teaching will increasingly be seen as “women’s work”, with the effect the learning at a university will no longer be perceived as masculine at all.
Although economics is part of the equation, I think the de-masculinization (or emasculation) of the university will be an essential part of the future decline of the university. When universities overwhelmingly become “women’s colleges” with token men, they are taken less seriously by the society at large.
Academic credentials are important for women. As a rule, prostitutes advertise their academic credentials to their prospective clients (or else claim to be “college students”), so it can be presumed that a college degree or two can add to a woman’s feminine allure. So, don’t assume there is no use for a degree in Women’s Studies, Southern Studies, Sexuality Studies, Journalism, or English – if one plans to become a prostitute.
#22 is SPOT on. When >50% of the population want to sit on their asses and live off the backs of the PRODUCERS we are SCREWED…..
The work ethic in Europe is negatively attacked by the conficatory tax rates for high income earners. I work with a company in Denmark. Since there is little incentive to get paid more (as Denmark will take 70%), they take compensation in the way of vacation. Try getting anyone to answer a phone between 12/15 and 1/15 of any year.
This has a trickle down effect. If the bosses don’t work, then there is no work for the support staff. No work means no pay for the lower rung staff.
As for the social welfare systems in Europe, there is certainly a reason to stop working. If college is free, you can get 5 degrees that don’t go anywhere and then come out into the workforce shocked that you can’t get a job.
In the US, we are seeing kids who don’t want a job unless it is management. Even if it is a job that will lead up, they don’t want it. Partly due, IMHO to the two prior generations getting jobbed by corps that layed off people rather than promoting them, and when kids see Dad, Grandpa, Uncle, Mom, Grandma, and Aunt all going through the same things, they tend to become “get mine first” kind of people.
Alexis #43:
Before on this site I have described an ABC TV show from 1993, in which the poor state of the economy then was illustrated by 3 college students.
One young lady had majored in art history. She wanted to manage an art gallery or museum but the economy was so bad that no such jobs were available. She was working as a waitress.
Another young lady had majored in French. She wanted an executive position with a company that did a lot of business with France. The economy was so bad that no such jobs were available. She was working as a nanny.
A young man had majored in International Relations. He had wanted a job as a US Senator but the economy was so bad that all the Senator slots were taken. He was working as a door-to-door salesman.
As someone here pointed out, at one time a major in French or Art History was a nice choice for a girl who wished to marry well and concentrate on raising a family for her highly successful husband. But those two girls apparently actually expected to be able to “go it alone” with that kind of career. It appears that the dominant philosophy for woman, gender superiority feminism, has collided with the traditional female college majors. They expect to be able to take what courses they want and be successful in their own right.
I will spare the litany of European’s love of socialism that remains a major factor in the calculus of their demise (and soon ours) and press on toward the biggest reason for their demise.
When Europe was prostrate after WWII and we needed trading outlets and partners we supplied the whole of the reconstruction costs. Then when the medium for the petri dish was fully prepared we moved militarily into every country we could, for there protection and ours, the Fulda Gap remaining a bug-a-boo. It was after all an era just prior to watching Nikita Khrushchev bounce his shoe off the table at the UN and threaten to bury the USA. We supplied the defense and the Europeans supplied the three month summer vacation and the harsh thirty five hour work week BECAUSE we supplied the defense. Forget we had nuclear “boomers” and bombers.
Had we, after a time demanded of Europe that they develop stronger defenses and drawn down our forces to minimum numbers the entire paradigm would have changed. We did not and as any good lazy American knows the Europeans weren’t going to rush into doing more work if we would do it for them. But then with the Rothschild’s and the Warburg’s running FED it paid handsomely to keep and even expand the status quo …at the expense of the US workers sweat and tax dollars.
Now the entire edifice is crumbling, the old saw in Indochina of the domino effect has been transferred to the united Europeans with the concomitant effect on the USA, encouraged and abetted by our own socialists. Our national debt at 14 trillion dollars now matches our national GDP with trillions more debt on the horizon.
When you demand nothing of a “partner” but window dressing that is what you get. When your Congress is riddle with minorities who have allence to things other than “cracker” America you’ve got trouble right here in River City.
When Congress is riddled with wannabe European socialists and disenchanted minorities you get the welfare state. Well, global implosion is inevitable for the Chinese and Sovs too have huge problems.
Watch closely as chicken little proves correct.
American Leftists (call them Socialists or Marxists – all the same – except for their “liberal” useful idiots) are the Pigs of Animal Farm who see themselves as “more equal than others.” The Marxist Pigs are enthralled with the idea of government (themselves) owning the fruit of the laboring “little animals” where all the eggs, apples, corn, etc. is placed into a commune – a communal pot under their exclusive control. The Marxist Pigs control the communal property – they are the commune-ists. The Marxist Pigs, after gorging themselves with a lion’s share of communal food, require all the “little animals” to approach their communal pot, tails wagging, in order to receive their leftover rations; and they must lick the hand that feeds them. Pig (Marxist) government encourages the lazy proletariat animals to relax in the barn while the others work in the fields; with this they can set up a perverted form of “democracy.” The Pigs control all the property in the communal pot, so they are in a position to in effect steal property from the laboring animals (“from each according to his abilities”) and give to the lazy (“to each according to his needs”) in return for votes. The lazy animals have unlimited needs, so the laboring animals can be taxed without limit. The Marxist Pigs are the managers of this struggle between the working and lazy classes, and through vote-purchasing (votes purchased with stolen property) set up a self-perpetuating “democracy” which keeps them in power. The Marxist Pigs must not allow the “little animals” to write a Declaration or Constitution thereby forming a Natural Law based Republic, but if they do it can be ignored or arbitrarily changed because they are “living documents.” Marxists must replace our Declarational/Constitutional Republic with a perverted Democracy in order to finally establish their Dictatorship.
“The proletariat (lazy animal class) will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie (working animal class), to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state (Marxist Pigs)… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the (non) working class is to raise the proletariat (lazy animals) to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
The Marxist Pigs of Animal Farm turn to Socialism/Communism because they get to be “more equal;” they become the not-to-be-equalized-equalizers of the “little animals” (serfs). Their “equality” of course is a massive Orwellian lie. Never mind that the Marxist Pigs end up as a new ruling class – superior (unequal) in property and superior (unequal) before law. Never mind that the equality between the lazy animals and the working animals ends up as equal poverty – because eventually the working animals become exhausted and there won’t be enough food – except of course for the Pigs who always raid the pot first. The lazy animals (proletariat class) turn to Socialism/Communism because they get to feast on the fruit of the laboring class – and flip them the bird as they swallow down.
The end game of Marxist “social justice” is anarchy followed by dictatorship, because with time more and more laboring animals become demoralized and exhausted and head for the barn – hands outstretched to the Marxist Pigs. Eventually there aren’t enough laboring animals in the fields to support the bloated Pigs plus the animals in the barn. Food production falls and hunger ensues. The “little animals” are desperate and resort to theft and, if necessary, violence in order to obtain some food. At this point the Marxist Pigs “come to the rescue” with a “dictatorship of the proletariat” (code for dictatorship of the Marxist Pigs). Self-serving economic collapse is not a bug within Marxism; it is a feature.
The problems faced by Francesca Esposito have long been existed, in a kind of distorted mirror fashion, within the Third World. For example, there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of “college educated” and sometimes experienced professional Filipino women who are working today as nannies, domestic helpers or in similar situations overseas. The fate of many an engineering graduate is to become a salesman for a technical product.
Jobs are often allocated by social connection and the value of a US or European degree lies largely in its social signaling content rather than its vocational utility.
Not that the Philippine educational system pays much attention to utility. The educational establishment exists to employ teachers and humor the ideological manias of education bureaucrats. For example, there’s a huge export industry to manufacture bands and entertainment acts for venues abroad. One BBC interview featured two women, with stage names “Fire” and “Rain”, both managed by an ethnic Chinese-Filipino who were taking their act abroad. But thing is, there are no music schools in the Philippines. If you want to learn the fine art of crooning in a night club or playing the keyboard, expect to learn it largely outside the educational system.
The Philippine educational system, for reasons of “nationalism” has steadfastly resisted teaching English to students despite the huge demand for English language skills among the poor and middle class for whom fluency in the language is the key to overseas employment or a job in a call center. In consequence, thousands of English language academies have sprung up, some under the headmastership of some British, American or Australian who, perhaps arriving as a tourist, saw an opportunity and stayed. If you drive south of Manila you’ll find academies with names like the “James Wilberforce Academy of English” or something like that.
But who knows if “James Wilberforce” actually exists? Maybe he’s as real as Uncle Ben or Aunt Jemima, just a trademark for a Korean. In Manila itself many of the English language academies are operated by Koreans. Yes, Koreans — who may or may not understand a word of English but who have enough capital and acumen to hire one of the unemployed Education graduates to go and teach their charges enough English to get by.
Ironically, this is distorting the very social structure itself. Just when the flagship academic educational systems were downgrading English, the poor and middle class were learning it. I remember coming across a waiter who spoke a very passable variety of received pronunciation. I asked after its provenance and it turned out that he had worked for some years in a London Club, to which he hoped to return once his new contract was approved.
Five years’ immersion in London is likely to teach far better English than ten years of English lessons in the University of the Philippines. And I suspect the call center guys are as good or better. Eight hours of nonstop conversational practice a day with irate native speakers on the other end of the line will produce pretty good English speakers. Thus the Koreans and the Magic Sing karaoke machine have taken over where the educational system stoops not to conquer.
That will play havoc with the upper class who will find that manner, and experience living abroad is no longer a reliable good to who or who does not come from a “good family”. A Filipino with butling experience in the UK will probably be able to pull off a fair imitation of 007. “My name is James,” he might say, lighting a cigarette from his gunmetal case. “James Dacuycuy.” I’m sure the fellas shown in the Taxi video above would get that joke instantly.
Alexis@43: Not to be crude, but I was wondering something similar when I read this post mention the young Isabella, a highly educated young woman, fluent in five languages, is thinking of moving from Italy to Costa Rica. I wondered, what profession could she engage in there? What could she do that would make a lot more money that what she does now ( apparently works for nothing)? And it did occur to me, if she is attractive, she could move to Costa Rica, hang out in the lounges of expensive resorts, meet international businessmen, and become a high-priced prostitute. Still, I wonder if that would work, there are lots of attractive Latina’s in Central and South America already, so even the oldest profession may not be open to her due to competition from the locals.
A drama teacher presumably teaches actors how to act. Are there really that many movies, plays and TV shows being made in Costa Rica? If she does get a job as a drama teacher, what are the students she teaches going to do for a living?
Is California Insane?
October 14, 2010 – by Roger L Simon
One of the famous definitions of insanity is repeating the same mistake over and over again while expecting a different result. Whether that’s a perfect definition is open to debate, but one thing is certain: it’s as accurate a description of the California electorate at this moment in 2010 as you could get.
How else to explain that Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer are still leading Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina by 5.4% and 3.3% (RCP averages) in a state where unemployment is 12.4% (not including the underemployed and the astronomical number that have already given up), and from which businesses are fleeing like rats from the proverbial sinking ship? Even the storefronts on swanky Rodeo Drive are standing empty.
Nevertheless, a plurality of the voters still want the same old, same old. I thought it was supposed to be the economy, stupid. It’s not as if Whitman and Fiorina are implausible candidates in a time of economic crisis. They’re ex-CEOs.
Crazy, no? How do you explain it? Sure Whitman and Fiorina have made mistakes in their campaigns, but so have their opponents. And with the state nearing bankruptcy, you would think minor campaign flubs would pale into insignificance.
So is it the mainstream media fuddy-duddy liberal obfuscation thing? That’s part of it, I guess, but given the extent of the layoffs at the state’s largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, which have been going on for some time now, you’d think even the media class would be waking up.
Alas, no. The truth is California — the land built on the future — has become stunningly averse to change.
It is a depressed place made up of terrified people, clinging to the solutions of another era. The idea that the electorate could even consider electing Jerry Brown in 2010 attests to that. At least you can understand the union workers — who are desperate to maintain their unsustainable pensions — supporting him, but the rest of the populace? You are dealing with a form of habituation so deep reality has no place in the equation.
California now is the state of the childishly threatened. No one seems to have an imagination anymore, particularly Hollywood, the industry that depends on imagination. They are backing Jerry with a tenacity that makes no sense. Hollywood was built on entrepreneurship, yet they abjure Whitman, one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time.
What do these entertainment king pins think will happen when Jerry Brown is elected? Do they think things will change? Do they want things to change or do they like things the way they are? Don’t look for the answers to these questions. Habit and tradition prevail into oblivion.
Indeed, to return to my premise, the situation is clear: as of now, California’s electorate is “repeating the same mistake over and over again while expecting a different result.” They used to say California was crazy because everyone was whacked out on acid or buzzed on coke. That’s nothing compared to now.
Comments:
California Wins Dumbest State Award in Landslide
Kyle-Ann Shiver
It’s the proverbial morning after and with votes counted, California has won the Dumbest State Award in a historic landslide of monstrous proportions.
All Californians can now see Greece from their bedroom windows. No need to even go to the backyards and crane their little necks.
In the coming years, the unions, who have been bilking Californians in a protection-racket type scheme, will be taking to the streets in massive, destructive temper tantrums just like those out-in-the-cold workers in other failed socialist states across the big pond. It won’t be pretty.
All the while Californians have been lining the greedy pockets of union masters, they’ve also saddled their economy with the greenest of the green anti-pollution laws, which they’ve just voted overwhelmingly to keep in place. At the very same time, they’ve neglected their infrastructure to the degree that whole cities will probably be condemned shortly as uninhabitable by anything higher on the evolutionary scale than rats. California’s sanctuary cities openly flout federal immigration laws with impunity now, but if they keep it up they’re going to face a loud demand from the other 49 for their statehood and immediate, irreversible secession by force.
Michigan voters saw their future Greece-like fate and changed course. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida did likewise. Others all across America’s heartland had the smarts to rein in out-of-control Democrat-socialists before their states hit the fans of bankruptcy history. They got it.
Californians still don’t get it.
Let’s start with the election of Governor Moonbeam. As I’m thinking of Jerry Brown’s reincarnated governorship, I’m already visualizing his mouth covered in duct tape for four years. Honestly, I’ll be the first to admit that Meg Whitman, although a brilliant businesswoman, was not the most spectacular political candidate. But really, have Californians been so brainwashed that they mistake a forked silver tongue for actual abilities in the budget-balancing realm? It’s enough to make bright citizens in the other 49 run for the barf bags. Never has a generation so disgraced their ingenuous, hard-working, self-reliant ancestors.
Nancy Pelosi’s disgraceful tenure as House speaker got the national drubbing she had been begging for since she first pranced around with the big gavel and unethically (illegally, probably) started her own foreign policy in the Middle East. This woman has so disgraced America, her state, her gender, her Catholic faith, and the Democrat Party that she couldn’t have won election as dog catcher in any of the other 49 states. But Californians re-elected Nancy Pelosi with a full 80% of her district’s votes. This is the woman who gushed that “Barack Obama is the man God has sent us at this time.” This is the woman who spearheaded the health care bill which started the avalanche that has destroyed Democrat political careers all across the land. For crying out loud, Nancy Pelosi, one of the richest members of the U.S. Congress, has been one of the most egregious wasters of public funds ever to hit Washington, D.C.
She has spent our money like it was the tissue wrapping that came in her outsized collection of Gucci accessories. While the country has been suffering, Nancy Pelosi took it upon herself to go organic in the Congress’ mess, order bunches and bunches of expensive tropical flowers for her offices, and demand a huge military jet for her personal jaunts, which have already cost this country more than we can count, much of it for liquor, treats, and family members’ costs. When a reporter asked her in the aftermath of the health care vote whether the bill was constitutional (Oh, the nerve of it!), imperious Nancy mocked the question with her dimwitted, “Are you serious?”
Those Democrats who survived Ms. Pelosi’s reign in the House are already showing their disdain for her single-handedly destroying the careers of so many. But Californians just can’t resist sending Nancy back to D.C., once again foisting her upon the rest of us. The only good news is that she will be stuck in the corner of perpetual national infamy, without gavel, chairmanship, or power. And we want our military jet back pronto!
Not to be outdone by Pelosi voters, those Californians in the 13th district reelected Rep. Pete Stark, the traitor who has made a name for himself trashing the very Constitution he swears to protect and defend. Pete Stark has the ignominious distinction of having told a constituent to her face that the federal “government in this country can do most anything.” Never has a U.S. representative so blatantly shredded the very document he is sworn to preserve, a document that expressly tells our federal government the many things it cannot do. Every Californian who pulled the lever for this Benedict Arnold ought to hang his head in shame and should never show his face in public again.
And now to the cake-taker in California’s miserable showing yesterday. In a statewide race that had the entire country holding its collective breath, Californians decided to reelect “Call me Senator” Boxer, whose intelligence is so questionable that the Los Angeles Times would not even endorse her in the Democratic primary.
To put icing on this purely poisonous cake, Madame Boxer was running against a candidate – Carly Fiorina – who had the rest of us in the other 49 drooling in envy. If only we had had such a powerhouse woman willing to serve us in the U.S. Senate. Not only is Ms. Fiorina an uber-competent, she is brilliant in both the technical and common sense realms. This woman, Carly Fiorina, held in her lovely hand the power to redeem California in the eyes of the other 49 in one fell swoop.
But what did Californians do with this golden-beyond-golden opportunity that the rest of us would have killed for? They blew it.
Even when news broke last week that Ms. Boxer had illegally implored California’s public school teachers to send their students to work for her campaign, the dumb-beyond-dumb citizens of California just rolled their eyes, donned their valley-girl ninny suits, and marched right in to vote for the Hollywood candidate. As those of us in the other 49 well remember, Senator Boxer is the brainy equivalent of a slug. She is the woman who stood on the once-august Senate floor and compared taxpayer-funded abortions to Viagra supplies for men. This is the woman backed to the hilt by the very unions that will tear California apart when those expected federal bailouts fail to come through.
So, with no further ado, let me bestow upon California the 2010 award for the dumbest state in the entire union.
Perhaps I will start a petition drive: Not one dime of bailout money for California! Any legislator from the other 49 who votes to send federal bailout money to California will be toast come the next primary season.
You Californians made your bed yesterday. Now sleep in it and don’t come crying to the rest of us when your lights go out, your water turns off, and your illegal-alien servants head back south.
Wretchard #49:
Brings to mind the situation on the early 1990’s, when an ad for Russians to go work as nannies in the USA for around $750 a month brought tens of thousands of adult applicants. This seemed to be incredible until it was pointed that in hard currency terms Boris Yeltsin made about $1500 a month.
Fat Cat California Teachers Union Misses the Education Mark
by Meredith Turney
The California Fair Political Practices Commission released a report last week detailing the fifteen most influential special interest groups in the state. Over the course of the last ten years, these fifteen groups—consisting of unions, Indian tribes, and corporations—spent over $1 billion on lobbying, candidates, ballot measures, and other political activities. In a state as large and influential as California, it’s not hard to imagine millions of dollars being expended on directing its course—especially when multiple ballot measures every election pit one interest group against another.
But among the top fifteen big spenders, one special interest group particularly stands out: the California Teachers Association (CTA). In the last decade, the CTA has spent over $200 million on lobbying and political activities—almost double what the second highest-spending lobbying group spent.
Unions have become the dominant political influence in California. At the mere hint of any threat to their power structure, the union-financed political machine fires up and intimidates all opposition. The hubris of the unions is such that during a legislative budget committee hearing last summer, one union leader threatened, “We helped get you into office and we’ve got a good memory.”
The CTA’s spending is especially noteworthy when one considers the issues it spends its members’ dues on. Most of the CTA’s 325,000 members probably assume that their dues are used only on education-related matters. But the CTA has branched out into all sorts of political battles beyond education funding.
Although it would seem logical that a teachers union would only focus on education issues, a look at the CTA web site reveals the true goal of this progressive union. According to the CTA mission statement, the union exists to “protect and promote the well-being of its members; to improve the conditions of teaching and learning; to advance the cause of free, universal, and quality public education.” That sounds like a perfectly ordinary goal for a teachers union.
But the mission statement goes on to explain that the union also exists to “ensure that the human dignity and civil rights of all children and youth are protected; and to secure a more just, equitable, and democratic society.” Ensuring “human dignity and civil rights,” as well as a “more just, equitable and democratic society” is far beyond the scope of simply lobbying for teachers’ salaries or more school supplies.
Since 2000, the CTA has spent over $38 million on lobbying the state legislature. A look at the legislation the CTA is lobbying in the current legislative session shows a focus on more than school-related matters.
The CTA is actively supporting Senate Joint Resolution 9, legislation calling upon Congress and the President to repeal the “discriminatory” Don’t Ask Don’t Tell military policy. It also lobbied to pass Senate Bill 572, which declares May 22 Harvey Milk Day in California, in honor of the homosexual activist from San Francisco.
Apparently universal healthcare has become a priority for the teachers union as it supported Senate Bill 1, legislation that would extend Medi-Cal coverage to illegal immigrants’ children. And the CTA isn’t just supporting, but is co-sponsoring Senate Bill 810, which would implement a single-payer government-run healthcare system in California. The CTA lobbied against a Republican-sponsored healthcare reform measure that would have provided greater competition in health insurance by allowing out-of-state carriers to sell plans in California
Even more telling than the legislation it supports, is the legislation the CTA opposes, including Senate Bill 370, which would have prevented voter fraud through voter identification requirements.
The CTA has also invested a great deal of time and money into the marriage issue. It supports Assembly Joint Resolution 19, calling on Congress and the President to repeal the “discriminatory” Defense of Marriage Act. It also lobbied on behalf of House Resolution 5 and Senate Resolution 7, which both expressed the legislature’s belief that Proposition 8 was an “improper” revision to the state constitution. In 2008, the CTA was among the biggest donors to the No on Proposition 8 campaign, pouring more than $1 million into the effort.
And if there were any doubt about the political party with whom the CTA most identifies, their $6.5 million dollar donation—the largest donation to any political party from the special interest groups—clearly signifies the union’s commitment to the Democrat Party.
Pay check protection is crucial to transforming California and diminishing the influence of unions. Union members who don’t agree with the aggressive social agenda of their unions are forced to pay dues spent on political campaigning that may violate their beliefs and standards. In the meantime, the CTA will continue to flood Sacramento with its money and influence—at the expense of those they supposedly represent.
RWE @ 15 said:
“An example was a man in Vero Beach, 61 years old, who lost his $100k/year job and figures he will have to go on Social Security as soon as he hits 62. … So the answer for at least 40% of them is “work till they drop” – in an economy in which work for anyone is scarce.”
I’m still employed and have plenty of money in my 401K but the above situation is my nightmare. The notion of “work till they drop” is more accurately described as “work till they get sick and then become permanently unemployed”. Many (most?) baby boomers are going to find themselves, sick, broke, unemployed and without health insurance. Their only option will be the black pill (their future will be like a scene out of “Soylent Green”). I should emphasize that Obamacare is NOT a solution (socialism does not work!). The US is already insolvent and printing money. The situation only gets worse when Medicare and Social Security fully kicks-in due to the retiring Baby Boomers. Obamacare is merely the “stake through the heart”.
Alexis @ 43 said:
“On an advertisement “Open Doors with a Doctorate” at the Council of Graduate Schools web site, there is a graph that shows how the number of PhD’s earned by men since 1969 has stayed stable for the past forty years. If anything, the number of doctorates earned by men dipped between 1975 and 2005.”
NASA and the USAF were paying for aerospace Ph.D. programs during the Cold War (that’s how I got mine). Most of that money has dried up. Bright guys now starting out in the aerospace profession typically have a masters degree and not a Ph.D. This is unfortunate because it helps to have a doctor’s degree if one is doing original research. Also a Ph.D. is obligatory if one wants to be a university academic.
Having a Ph.D. is no longer a guarantee of employment. I saw a very scary Utube video based upon a 60 minutes episode about unemployment in the Silicon Valley. It so happens that I work in the Silicon Valley. This video showed a scene that might have been an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting except it was for laid-off professionals who had used up all of their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and run out of options. Most of these people were about my age, had about my level of education and made more money than myself while they were still employed. Now they were unemployed with no employment options and their 401Ks zeroed out. They were all at that wonderful age where they were too old to change careers but too young to retire. This sort of stuff keeps me awake at night. I need to figure out how to dodge this bullet but quite frankly I don’t have a clue how to do it.
Perhaps one coming paradigm for employment is moving forward into the past. As noted above, too few people are needed to create too much stuff. THis is because so much is automated and factory-ized. But there is a growing trend counter to that, which has started with food production. There are now many, many boutique producers of meat, produce, cheese, etc. They make a decent living from hard work, and they use far more people-to-product than factory farms. Sure, right now they exist because it is fashionable for rich people to buy expensive boutique products. But perhaps this can be the thin end of a wedge that in effect re-ruralizes some of the population (once we hang the environmentalists…).
Maybe this trend can expand to other things. Clothing, furniture, housewears. Maybe the future is a place where we have a whole lot less stuff, but the stuff we have is high quality and built to last. Do you really need fifty t-shirts made in China and ten pairs of sneakers?
We’ve already seen music go the route of smaller is better. The Top 40 of the past is now a Top 400 or 4000, with countless musical acts, but fewer and fewer superstars. I like it that way.
This economic model might also work even in the face of a declining overall population, because it creates fewer goods but at higher overall human input and for a higher price. In fact, a declining population might be exactly what makes it work (e.g. you can’t feed 350 million people from boutique farms… could you feed 200 million?). Of course, it would create a lot less billionaires and eliminate the culture of conspicuous consumption, but that would be exceedingly healthy for the fibre of the nation.
It won’t work in the face of relentless immigration however. The economic problem is a web of many strands. I only propose this as one of them.
I saw a very scary Utube video based upon a 60 minutes episode about unemployment in the Silicon Valley. It so happens that I work in the Silicon Valley. This video showed a scene that might have been an Alcoholic Anonymous meeting except it was for laid-off professionals who had used up all of their 99 weeks of unemployment benefits and run out of options.
And yet just yesterday I saw a clip of Bill Gates on television talking about how important it was to keep the H1B’s coming into the country. What a farce.
call me Roy @ 51 quoted:
“Senator Boxer is the brainy equivalent of a slug.”
That’s an insult to slugs. She’s notorious for being brain dead. It seems to be her selling feature. Don’t ask me why she keeps being re-elected. It’s a California thing….
Roy, nice contributions but say it ain’t so….
“Even the storefronts on swanky Rodeo Drive are standing empty.”
Oh! the humanity.
I don’t have an answer so I am reaching out to the collective minds assembled here.
*Islam aggression
*Chinese military soon to be VERY powerful and a world game changer.
*EU in collaspe
*US, worlds largest debtor nation and perhaps headed for a double dip recession or a full blown depression. Europe to follow.
*Russia claiming large parts of the Arctic north
*An actively subversive US political party (Socialist Democrats) bent on total US socialism.
*etc
*A POTUS of HIGHLY suspect lineage and motives.
*add your own challenge we face
Question….do we have a chance of remaining free and if so how?
LD@26: The bubble is specifically that the value of education, in future earnings, has been outpaced by the cost, at least for most fields. Leaving more and more students with debts they cannot repay, or get out from under. Eventually the clientele must wake up a realize they’re being scammed.
The sequel to the ‘higher ed’ scam being the proliferation of educational ‘enhancement’ training courses to improve one’s competitive position in today’s ‘tough job market.’
The sequel comes fully loaded with several bottom lines, one of which is that an individual is no longer considered qualified to do anything without a degree or a certification, available at ever escalating tuition costs; another being that the experience of learning through which knowledge and judgment are acquired is no longer identified as a valuable or particularly portable asset.
(The Asian PhD’s bring some issues in this regard, the certification mill being more of a ticket abroad, one that gets clipped back a bit in the broader USA business environment where techs move in closer proximity with a more diverse slate of field workers, public opinion and decision-makers.)
-YRB, AICP, PGE, CFM, PS,
and of course the coveted piece de resistance,
BS.
The Voyage of the Doomed
The American Dream
Do you hear that rumble in the distance? That is the Baby Boomers – they are getting ready to retire. On January 1st, 2011 the very first Baby Boomers turn 65. Millions upon millions of them are rushing towards retirement age.
Only there is a huge problem. We don’t have the money . It simply isn’t there. But the millions of Baby Boomers getting ready to retire are counting on that money to be there. This all comes at a really bad time for a federal government that is already flat broke and for a national economy that is already on the brink of disaster.
The following are 16 statistics about the coming retirement crisis that will drop your jaw…..
#1 Beginning January 1st, 2011 every single day more than 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach the age of 65. That is going to keep happening every single day for the next 19 years.
#2 According to one recent survey, 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything at all to retirement savings.
#3 Most Baby Boomers do not have a traditional pension plan because they have been going out of style over the past 30 years. Just consider the following quote from Time Magazine: The traditional pension plan is disappearing. In 1980, some 39 percent of private-sector workers had a pension that guaranteed a steady payout during retirement. Today that number stands closer to 15 percent, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington, D.C.
#4 Over 30 percent of U.S. investors currently in their sixties have more than 80 percent of their 401k invested in equities. So what happens if the stock market crashes again?
#5 35% of Americans already over the age of 65 rely almost entirely on Social Security payments alone.
#6 According to another recent survey, 24% of U.S. workers admit that they have postponed their planned retirement age at least once during the past year.
#7 Approximately 3 out of 4 Americans start claiming Social Security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62. Most are doing this out of necessity. However, by claiming Social Security early they get locked in at a much lower amount than if they would have waited.
#8 Pension consultant Girard Miller recently told California’s Little Hoover Commission that state and local government bodies in the state of California have $325 billion in combined unfunded pension liabilities. When you break that down, it comes to $22,000 for every single working adult in California.
#9 According to a recent report from Stanford University, California’s three biggest pension funds are as much as $500 billion short of meeting future retiree benefit obligations.
#10 It has been reported that the $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System is 61% underfunded and is on the verge of complete collapse.
#11 Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the combined pension liability for all 50 U.S. states. What they found was that the 50 states are collectively facing $5.17 trillion in pension obligations, but they only have $1.94 trillion set aside in state pension funds. That is a difference of 3.2 trillion dollars. So where in the world is all of that extra money going to come from? Most of the states are already completely broke and on the verge of bankruptcy.
#12 According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Social Security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. Sadly, in the years ahead these “Social Security deficits” are scheduled to become absolutely horrific as hordes of Baby Boomers start to retire.
#13 In 1950, each retiree’s Social Security benefit was paid for by 16 U.S. workers. In 2010, each retiree’s Social Security benefit is paid for by approximately 3.3 U.S. workers. By 2025, it is projected that there will be approximately two U.S. workers for each retiree. How in the world can the system possibly continue to function properly with numbers like that?
#14 According to a recent U.S. government report, soaring interest costs on the U.S. national debt plus rapidly escalating spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will absorb approximately 92 cents of every single dollar of federal revenue by the year 2019. That is before a single dollar is spent on anything else.
#15 After analyzing Congressional Budget Office data, Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff concluded that the U.S. government is facing a “fiscal gap” of $202 trillion dollars. A big chunk of that is made up of future obligations to Social Security and Medicare recipients.
#16 According to a recent AARP survey of Baby Boomers, 40 percent of them plan to work “until they drop”. If they have a job.
WOW!
cmR: “Even the storefronts on swanky Rodeo Drive are standing empty.”
Tell them to hold on.
Help is the the Way.
Stay Strong.
Habu 59,
Karl Marx was an evil genius; he figured out a way to defeat a democracy – Marxism will finally “win the battle of democracy.” The United States is not a democracy, and we must prove this to ourselves and to the World by amending our Constitution with anti-Marxist poison – anti-Marxist law. That is how we will retain our God-given right to liberty – our freedom. We must struggle politically for freedom or we will have to struggle physically for it. Struggle of one sort or the other is required for people to become and remain free – preferably political struggle.
Amendment XXVIII
Section 1. The Declaration of Independence is the supreme un-amendable natural/moral law of the United States
Section 2. Term limits for Congress (shorter) and the Supreme Court (longer)
Section 3. Federal taxation under Amendment XVI shall not exceed 10% for any individual, nor shall Federal taxation under Amendment XVI exceed 10% of the nation’s GDP
Section 4. Federal income shall only consist of 10% domestic taxation as per Section 3 regarding Amendment XVI, plus foreign tariffs, plus the sale of domestically purchased bonds by U.S. Citizens
Section 5. Federal spending shall not exceed federal income. Federal income shall not occur through borrowing or self-creation of money.
Section 6. Amendment XVII is hereby revoked
Section 7. Supreme Court decisions shall be revoked by Congress with 2/3 or greater vote in both houses.
Section 8. Article I, Section 8 shall be changed to: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States, and provisions for general welfare shall be uniform throughout the United States and innumerated herein this Constitution; To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and to regulate disputes of commerce among the several states…”
When Federal government is placed back into its smaller non-God-like box – when Federal government gets only 10% – the States (empowered and limited by their own 10% taxation) would find themselves positioned to take over (or share with private charities) all social programs now un-Constitutionally administered by Federal government: Social Security, Healthcare, Education, etc., etc. Limiting Federal taxation to 10% would have the effect of resurrecting the 10th amendment – resurrecting State government – resurrecting the Bill of Rights – resurrecting the Constitution. With such an amendment “We the People” will finally become “masters of both Congress and the Courts” – masters of our own destiny.
“I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man… As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also… The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Thomas Jefferson
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
OK Richard. I have to call you out on this one. I didn’t expect you in concert with these young Marxists that are now describing Social Security an ‘entitlement’. They just don’t want to participate in some of their own programs now that they can see the folly.
I’m sure I’m a fairly ‘typical’ boomer: Started paying into SS at age 13; now at age 58 I have 8 years left until ‘full retirement’ so they say. I’m willing to work on if my health allows.
OK – here’s the kicker: I don’t expect to see any of it. Not a dime.
So Richard: explain to me how that is an entitlement!
In the early-to-mid 20th Century, it used to be that most people would enter the work force after high school. They would be given IQ and literacy tests, and placed in jobs accordingly. The ambitious would take classes either at night/weekends or take correspondence courses. By demonstrating ability and competence, they would rise.
The EEOC and the Griggs v Duke Power case changed all that. Now, it is illegal to administer a test to see if a prospective applicant can read and write well. So companies have to use the surrogate method of seeing if he got a degree.
If we eliminated this obstacle, then companies could again hire smart people out of high school. With online distance learning, young people could continue their education while working, with the company picking up the tab (as companies currently do for post-bachelor education or technical certifications). And companies would be much less likely to pay for classes in Women’s Studies than for courses that actually improve the employee’s ability to think and communicate clearly and effectively (the historical objective of education).
Regarding the young lady who spoke five languages: the great advantage that the US had over Europe was that an executive on one side of the continent could pick up a phone and call his supplier on the other end of the continent, and they would both be able to communicate in English. Time spent learning multiple languages could be used learning other things.
OK Richard. I have to call you out on this one. I didn’t expect you in concert with these young Marxists that are now describing Social Security an ‘entitlement’. They just don’t want to participate in some of their own programs now that they can see the folly.
Because the way it is actually set up is a transfer payment funded through payroll taxes. The current workers pay the retired workers. It is not a fund that you “pay into”. So even if you have paid “into it” from the age of 13, there was no “it”. That money is gone; it’s been spent. There is nothing to recover, nothing inside the account into which you have paid. As one guy put it:
A lot of people thought they were making payments into a fund they could later make a claim on. The money was “theirs”, they “earned it”. Morally speaking this was true. But in actuality it was just a transfer payment, made by taking money from the current workforce to the retired workforce. While the Baby Boom provided this wave of workers, the system could be sustained. Now that huge cohort is retiring and must depend upon a relatively smaller work base to fund their retirement.
Some have called it a Ponzi scheme, in which new entrants pay out to the earlier entrants, though that may be too harsh. Here’s Milton Friedman on the “Social Security Myth”.
courses that actually improve the employee’s ability to think and communicate clearly and effectively (the historical objective of education). – MichaelC
Not particularly subtle of me to note, but communication skills seem to have taken a back seat to wage compensation as a driver of employability:
The Peggy Factor
Ponzi is giggling in his grave; alongside FDR, LBJ, etc, etc.
RWE (46) wrote:
at one time a major in French or Art History was a nice choice for a girl who wished to marry well and concentrate on raising a family for her highly successful husband.
There seems to have been a brief window, during the ’70′s and ’80′s when not-terribly-well-credentialed older boomer women could nevertheless move up the corporate ladder. The recently retired Director of my department was indeed a French major back in the 1960′s. After she got bored teaching high school kids, she had a brief and unsuccessful career as an interior decorator before getting a secretarial job in hospital administration. She managed to get promoted to manager and eventually to director in the late ’80′s and I don’t believe she went back to school to earn a Master’s Degree. A soon-to-be retired manager in that same department has 2 Associate Degrees (no B.A.) and started out doing physician billing for physicians in private practice before going to work for a hospital system.
I’ve known other older boomers who ended up in adminstrative/managerial positions despite starting out with pretty impractical degrees, or, in some cases, no bachelor’s degree at all. Now a younger person would not even be considered for either position without a Master’s in Healthcare Administration. In fact, it would be difficult to get hired as an “administrative assistant” – a job which once required only good typing and shorthand skills – without a B.A.
Eggplant #54:
There is strength in numbers, because there are votes. I think that the Boomer Poverty Issue will drive at least attempts to mandate government solutions to it. It will further lend support to the “Nationalize All 401K’s” suggestion that has already been put forth as well as other efforts to seize personal retirement assets and accomplish Means Testing for SS money.
And someone is bound to say at some point that it is not “fair” that you and I will be Okay when others are not.
As for inflation being Good For The Poor and Bad for the Rich, that’s absurd. In 1980 I bought a T-bill at 16.1%. If I can take my money out of the stock market and the banks and get that kind of return I’ll be pleased indeed.
In fact, the government’s attempts to bail out the people who got in too deep and to make sure the housing industry does not have to suffer for its massive mistakes has hurt the elderly badly. Many depend on interest from simple savings accounts to live on; now they are getting zip,
Habu #61: Saw that same data in the article that mentioned the guy in Vero Beach. Perhaps the worst part was the observation that many Boomers don’t seem to worry about it.
peterike @ 55 said:
“Maybe the future is a place where we have a whole lot less stuff, but the stuff we have is high quality and built to last. Do you really need fifty t-shirts made in China and ten pairs of sneakers?”
There is no doubt in my mind that this represents the future economic niche for America, i.e. high quality, long lasting, resource efficient manufactured goods. A month or two ago, I mentioned that America should be retooling itself to manufacture a “standard car” that is designed to last one million miles and be extremely easy to maintain. That same sort of design concept could be applied towards all white goods and major appliances. This is how we could turn the table on the Chinese. Their whole merchandising strategy is to crank out cheap junk that needs to be replaced within a few months after purchase. Normally a manufacturer does not want to produce super long life products because it cuts into their long term business margin. However if an American manufacturer has already been wiped out due to Chinese competition then there is no down side risk in pursuing the manufacture of super long life products. In essence by doing so, we would be creating a new economic niche that we could exclusively occupy.
w@67: It is not a fund that you “pay into”. So even if you have paid “into it” from the age of 13, there was no “it”. That money is gone; it’s been spent.
Not exactly. Readers may have received an email that started circulating in late 2005 detailing some rather incendiary facts on SS, including the following:
Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent “Trust” fund and put it into the General fund so that Congress could spend it?
A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically-controlled House and Senate.
Snopes disputes the veracity of that assertion, and maintains that the two funds remain separate but included in the same budgetary accounting (which is still not GAAP).
I’ve heard it compared to Enron’s off-shore entities.
One of my dad’s buddies is 77 and has been drawing SS since he was 64. He’s well off (good for him) and his standard of living would not change if he had no SS at all. He’s been on it now long enough that he’s used up everything he put in plus all the interest it generated.
I get along real well with him but I can’t broach the subject of SS reform without him blowing a fuse.
In the past, when I brought it up, he’d come up with a million reasons why there couldn’t be ANY reform….
- Too many people depended on it as a sole source of money.
- It was the only government handout that everyone could get, even if they were well off.
- People had “paid into the system” and so you couldn’t touch it.
- SS will “always” be there. It can’t go away and it can’t be changed.
Etc.
False, all. As I defused and demolished each of these arguments I could see his blood pressure going up and his anger level rising. It took me a few times of doing this to realize that there wasn’t any argument, no matter how logical or based in the truth and reality, that would sway him. The REAL reason he didn’t want any SS reform of any kind had nothing to do with concern for the poor or some uber sense of fairness. No, it was that he didn’t want any change to happen that would even in the remotest way diminish even by one cent HIS monthly checks. Even if it means damning his six kids and all the grandkids to fiscal insanity.
Inevitably, these discussions would end with me saying, “Well, I’m planning my retirement as though SS won’t be there.” And you know what? He’d say that was a good idea.
Huh?
If SS is a wonderful thing that will “always” be there then why is it a good idea for me to plan as though it won’t?
His POV was that any reform must be categorically rejected no matter what it might be. If a reform of any kind happened, there might be other reforms – including one that would diminish his checks. Therefore, no reforms at all is the “safe” position to take, damn the consequences to others. I find this mentality to be the same as public sector employees who don’t like to see anyone who works for the government fired for any reason no matter how justified, because any firing represents the concept that they could lose their own job, some day.
63. Storm-Rider
A very thoughtful and accurate picture. I have pointed this next comment out several times but it bears continued illumination.
The Ten Planks of the Communist Manifesto … we’ve already implimented them all.
In his Manifesto Marx described the following ten steps as necessary steps to be taken to destroy a free enterprise society!! Notice how many of these conditions, foreign to the principles that America was founded upon, have now, in 1997, been realized by the concerted efforts of socialist activists? Remember, government interference in your daily life and business is intrusion and deprivation of our liberties!
First Plank: Abolition of property in land and the application of all rents of land to public purposes. (Zoning – Model ordinances proposed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover widely adopted. Supreme Court ruled “zoning” to be “constitutional” in 1921. Private owners of property required to get permission from government relative to the use of their property. Federally owned lands are leased for grazing, mining, timber usages, the fees being paid into the U.S. Treasury.)
Second Plank: A heavy progressive or graduated incometax. (Corporate Tax Act of 1909. The 16th Amendment, allegedly ratified in 1913. The Revenue Act of 1913, section 2, Income Tax. These laws have been purposely misapplied against American citizens to this day.)
Third Plank: Abolition of all rights of inheritance. (Partially accomplished by enactment of various state and federal “estate tax” laws taxing the “privilege” of transfering property after death and gift before death.)
Fourth Plank: CONFISCATION OF THE PROPERTY OF ALL EMIGRANTS AND REBELS. (The confiscation of property and persecution of those critical – “rebels” – of government policies and actions, frequently accomplished by prosecuting them in a courtroom drama on charges of violations of non-existing administrative or regulatory laws.)
Fifth Plank: Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. (The Federal Reserve Bank, 1913- -the system of privately-owned Federal Reserve banks which maintain a monopoly on the valueless debt “money” in circulation.)
Sixth Plank: Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State. (Federal Radio Commission, 1927; Federal Communications Commission, 1934; Air Commerce Act of 1926; Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938; Federal Aviation Agency, 1958; becoming part of the Department of Transportation in 1966; Federal Highway Act of 1916 (federal funds made available to States for highway construction); Interstate Highway System, 1944 (funding began 1956); Interstate Commerce Commission given authority by Congress to regulate trucking and carriers on inland waterways, 1935-40; Department of Transportation, 1966.)
Seventh Plank: Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (Depart-ment of Agriculture, 1862; Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933 — farmers will receive government aid if and only if they relinquish control of farming activities; Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933 with the Hoover Dam completed in 1936.)
Eighth Plank: Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies especially for agriculture. (First labor unions, known as federations, appeared in 1820. National Labor Union established 1866. American Federation of Labor established 1886. Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 placed railways under federal regulation. Department of Labor, 1913. Labor-management negotiations sanctioned under Railway Labor Act of 1926. Civil Works Administration, 1933. National Labor Relations Act of 1935, stated purpose to free inter-state commerce from disruptive strikes by eliminating the cause of the strike. Works Progress Administration 1935. Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, mandated 40-hour work week and time-and-a-half for overtime, set “minimum wage” scale. Civil Rights Act of 1964, effectively the equal liability of all to labor.)
Ninth Plank: Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country. (Food processing companies, with the co-operation of the Farmers Home Administration foreclosures, are buying up farms and creating “conglomerates.”)
Tenth Plank: Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production. (Gradual shift from private education to publicly funded began in the Northern States, early 1800′s. 1887: federal money (unconstitutionally) began funding specialized education. Smith-Lever Act of 1914, vocational education; Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 and other relief acts of the 1930′s. Federal school lunch program of 1935; National School Lunch Act of 1946. National Defense Education Act of 1958, a reaction to Russia’s Sputnik satellite demonstration, provided grants to education’s specialties. Federal school aid law passed, 1965, greatly enlarged federal role in education, “head-start” programs, textbooks, library books.
nmu @ 74: not everyone age 77 is making a lot of sense on any topic, nor cares much if they do.
nor any other age, but you know what I mean.
Josh #76 (that’s the spirit):
“nmu @ 74: not everyone age 77 is making a lot of sense on any topic, nor cares much if they do.”
I beg to differ, Josh. Other than the subject of SS the guy in my post was probably smarter and sharper than the two of us put together.
I’ve had clients and business associates in their 80′s and 90′s who were razor sharp.
I get your drift, but I do like to give folks a chance.
Eggplant #71:
I think you are right. But have it exactly backwards.
The answer is not in cookie cutter Peoples’ Wagons but rather in individually customizable vehicles, designed to be long lasting and reliable and even using standard components but built on order by shops – the way computers are.
A friend of mine worked for a company, Haas, that makes computer controlled machining equipment. Unlike previous machines they make them easy to operate; someone with relatively little training can do the work that would have required a master machinist. The USN even equips its ships with the machines. It is getting easier and cheaper to do custom work.
Take a look at Wal Mart, Publix, Winn Dixie, etc. The difference from the old grocery stores is that they have delis and bakeries, not that they have more standardized products. In the book Future Shock they pointed out that the number of choices for consumers was increasing, not decreasing.
Rather than buying a cheapo mass produced car that was built under the philosophy that saving 5 cents at a time by cutting corners is the design objective (the way Detroit has done it for years) how about going down to the local shop and having one made with the features you need? Not only could they use standardized mechanical components but they could be more easily upgraded with later equipment if required.
Not only would this make the USA competition-immune, but it would break the back of many destructive unions and return manufacturing to local areas. If there are 2,000 custom car shops it is kinda hard to go on strike.
Here’s the link to that scary “60 Minutes” video that I earlier mentioned:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/21/60minutes/main6978943.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
RWE @ 71 said:
“It will further lend support to the “Nationalize All 401K’s” suggestion that has already been put forth as well as other efforts to seize personal retirement assets and accomplish Means Testing for SS money.”
I think it’s a safe bet that the federal government will attempt to seize 401Ks through some means. I’ve read that currency controls may already be in place to make it more difficult to transfer large sums of money out of the US. It would be logical to establish currency controls prior to attempting the outright seizure of 401k money. However, I am of the opinion that the federal government will seize 401K money mainly through stealth rather than through open theft. It is my opinion that the stock market became a rigged game after the Dot-Com implosion. The best way to steal 401k money is to fool people into voluntarily handing their money over through stock market swindles. Some added advantages to a rigged stock market is this can facilitate the transfer of money to the large banks for supporting the real estate market and for control of the petroleum price by deliberately crashing the markets when the petroleum price exceeds $130/barrel.
RWE @ 78 said:
“The answer is not in cookie cutter Peoples’ Wagons but rather in individually customizable vehicles, designed to be long lasting and reliable and even using standard components but built on order by shops – the way computers are.”
This is a detail. The basic chassis, frame and power train for the proposed “standard car” should be standardized while exterior plastic panels and interior upholstery be customized to individual taste. The GM-Saturn did this. My wife owns a 1996 Saturn SL-1. I’ve replaced several of the exterior plastic panels with junk yard parts. Typically a single panel is held in with about 6 screws. I can swap out a door panel in about twenty minutes. It’s much easier to swap out a plastic door panel on a Saturn with a junk yard part than to beat-out, bondo and spray paint a dent in a conventional sheet metal panel.
#74 no mo euro
May I suggest that your dad’s buddy is no friend of yours; his condition for getting along with you is for you to go along with a lie. This is not meant to impugn you in any way.
If he is as sharp as you say, he knows that the system is unsustainable. That’s why he approves of your not assuming you will get any SS. He counts on dying before circumstances force changes to the system.
He’s sold his integrity for a “comfortable” retirement.
RWE and Eggplant, I think we’re getting to the same place. With reduction in scale and increase in quality, more specialization becomes possible, because there’s no need for the widget manufacturer to make a million widgets. You can’t make a million unique widgets. You can make a thousand a year though. And every town can have its own widget maker(s).
It’s the difference between a tailored suit and shirt (not that I’ve ever had one, but I’ve heard…) and one off the rack. Maybe the future is back to local tailors and cobblers and bakers and butchers. I know all the arguments in Walmart’s favor, but me, I’ll be happy when the last one shuts its doors.
Habu @ 59: “Q….do we have a chance of remaining free and if so how?”
Yes.
You know the hard answer. The sticky is coming up with the path of least destruction.
43. Alexis,
Language Arts are over rated, and only five?
Poor Jenny, bright as a penny
27 languages and she couldn’t say “No.”
Eggplant #54;
This can be a lot of fun: http://www.coolworks.com/
Social Security and entitlements have drained and will continue to drain us. Many European governments are now so desperate that they are now confiscating private pensions to pay for government debt – Look at Hungary and France. They started out under the guise of stopping double-dipping, but the slippery slope is there and they can, will and have taken private pensions to pay for others. California will probably do the same very soon.
64. Enscout OK Richard. I have to call you out on this one. I didn’t expect you in concert with these young Marxists that are now describing Social Security an ‘entitlement’. They just don’t want to participate in some of their own programs now that they can see the folly.
You seem to be saying that “young Marxists” call SS an entitlement because SS is folly and they don’t want to participate in it. But that doesn’t square with:
OK – here’s the kicker: I don’t expect to see any of it. Not a dime.
So Richard: explain to me how that is an entitlement!
First you treat “entitlement” as if it suggested that the payout was unlikely to occur, but next you treat it as if it suggested that the payout was likely to occur. You can’t have it both ways.
“Waaa! Those selfish old geezers insist on keeping their jobs instead of vacating them for us!”
“Waaa! Those selfish old geezers insist on retiring and making us pay their pensions!”
:rolleyes:
The most important thing is that they’re the ones controlling the flight.
Ginger, both things are true in their own fashion.
Worldwide we have a situation where people can keep their jobs (if they wish) in perpetuity. This will certainly affect the entry positions available to new workers, particularly in light of the fact that people are living longer than the “planners” planned.
Well and good – but if they do happen to retire early, they can get retirement benefits above and beyond any contributions plus interest they put into the system. And, in the most cynical and dishonest fashion possible, many, many folks made the calculation that they’ll be gone before the system blows up.
All of this is justified by actuarial data and societal notions of longevity that are out of date and incorrect. The way the theory goes, people need to retire by 60 or so to enjoy a few meager “golden years”. This is nonsense based upon old data. If you are a woman in the US and you reach 60, your life expectancy is 83. A man’s is slightly less. Therefore, a person who takes SS at 67, let’s say, has a greater than 50% chance of using up all their contributions + interest. Taking it at 62 is even worse. You don’t need to be a math genius to see this is unsustainable.
There’s a reason why private sector businesses moved away from defined benefit plans. Say what you like about them, most companies realized 30 years ago that people were living longer, yet demanding to retire still at 60 or so. Defined contribution plans were the only ones that wouldn’t bankrupt the business. The industries that didn’t make the change, like the auto industry, were basically destroyed, becoming retirement plans that happened to make automobiles.
Kathy P @ 33 – Wow, that has a nice ring to it, but on to more substantive matters. Most here at Belmont Club, I believe, are optimists who believe deeply in the potential of the American people.
What they see, however, is that their nation is in the grip of evil, cleverly disguised as compassionate politicians who want to right the unfairness and suffering that they perceive.
They know that they have the solutions for what ails mankind, but they do not. In their attempts to pursue ‘social justice’, moral imperatives, and equitable distribution of wealth, they will in fact, smote ruin upon this nation.
The sincerity of their belief belies the corruption and inadequacy of their thinking.
One question manifests key aspects concerning why Marxists or socialist schemes will always destroy first the productivity, then the prosperity of a nation. Then, nothing is left for national defense. The question is ‘why work hard to contribute to the great storehouse, when you can take from the storehouse without working?’
Don’t judge harshly those that would warn you about the danger this nation faces. We have not surrendered, but are steeling ourselves for the struggle to right this great ship of state.
We have much to fear when politicians gain and hold power by promising to shovel greater largess from the public treasury in the guise of ‘helping the downtrodden’ with entitlement programs.
90 epignosis – not judging. Just saying the theory is that the forces of thought and belief are powerful things. One very interesting part in the film What the Bleep Do We know was about the experiments with thoughts on water by Masaru Emoto. Amazing. The question in the film wss – if thoughts can do this to water, what can they do to us?
Kathy – world would never be the same after Einstein opened windows of understanding. Not only relativity theories, but quantum concepts emerged from his work, coupled with the efforts of Max Planck.
Much misunderstanding and even distortion has also resulted.
At the core, his work concerned the limitations of humans in perception of the physical world. This gives rise to measurement problems when relative velocities are very large or matter is very small.
Yard sticks (or meter sticks, if you prefer) don’t really get shorter on board the spaceship traveling at 0.9 x C. But we perceive that they do! It’s a limitation of human knowledge and perception.
At the quantum level, our perception again fails us. We cannot be certain if an electron is here, or there, or what path it has taken, except upon detection. It is not a tiny spherical ball. We don’t know for sure what it is other than by observations and measurements of its interactions with other stuff.
Many folks go way ‘overboard’ with metaphysical interpretations of all this crazy stuff. Don’t let yourself be swept away by disingenuous deceivers. Some of the stuff in the production that you cite is out-and-out balderdash. Be skeptical and always guard your thoughts against the intrusion of clever deception.
87. SF
“You can’t have it both ways.”
You have it backwards. I (we) can’t have it either way.
SS wasn’t considered an “entitlement” until it went broke, which everybody with half a brain should have realized would occur at some point. It is with this newfound reality that the description became common.
Now boomers are facing the double sword of losing all their “benefits” and being vilified for their forced participation.
My point is this: this was always a scam. All were required to participate (it is law). Suddenly using the term “entitlement” is just as dishonest as using the terms “contribution” and “benefit” to describe its mechanics.
happygrl @ 85 said:
“This can be a lot of fun: http://www.coolworks.com/ ”
Thanks for the link. Those would certainly be fun hobby jobs, i.e. entertaining employment with the down side of low pay and/or no health care benefits. After I retire (hopefully 10 years away), I’ll try to get a hobby job just to keep myself busy and sane. I’d prefer the hobby job to be in aerospace working as a consultant. However I can see myself working at a national park or on a cruise ship. There’s a sand island off the coast of Queensland, Australia called “Moreton Island” that I enjoyed visiting. I’ve fantasized about “running out the clock” on Moreton Island as a beach comber living in a squatters shack. If things go completely to hell (full economic implosion followed by social breakdown), I may end up doing that.
“I imagine the Chinese will just move into Southern Europe.”
it’s already the case, in Spain, near Alicante, you can find many big Chinese restaurants, like “the Wok self-service” thing, big Chinese bazars, and store from where all the spanish and european small stores can get their stuffs.
Almost of the economists are saying that Spain will default about next spring, though, I can’t see that the Spanish population is worried, businesses stil work as they used to, it’s rather the tourist construction business that closed down, but it doesn’t ply on the ordinary spanish life style.
Also, it’s true that even “educated” children rather stay home by their parents, jobs don’t pay a lot, and to buy a condo or a small flat, costs them high interests, so that a young couple that wants to settle has to pay up to 40 to 50 years credits loans. Our spanih friend told us that he bought his flat 25 years ago and that he had to pay 20% credit interests for it, but that the Region allotted him a third of them as free.
I remember when the soviet empire collapsed, the populations, even the highest educated, had to find a new job that had nothing to do with the studies they made, some became stores holders… or paysants.
My future daughter in law, who is Ukrainian, told us that her parents, even as university teachers breed some pigs and poultry, cultivate potatoes and vegetable to fulfil the family needs
Enscout @ 93 said:
“(Social Security) SS wasn’t considered an “entitlement” until it went broke, which everybody with half a brain should have realized would occur at some point. … My point is this: this was always a scam.”
Social Security was an obvious scam. When Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Social Security System, he set the retirement age at 65 years at a time when the average life expectancy was 65 years (back then, most people smoked and health care technology was lousy). The current US life expectancy is 78 years. If Social Security was reset as Roosevelt originally intended then no one would be on Social Security until they were 78 years of age or older. If one wants to take a really nasty slant on the Social Security System, one could argue that it was originally intended by FDR as a Ponzi Scheme to enrich the federal government (a form of less obvious taxation much like inflation through currency debasement).
People are such naive children that they allow themselves to be deceived and robbed by socialist thieves and liars.
aDuoist
“Trouble is, since WWII, for each decade that French workers out-performed American workers, the Americans out-produced the French by twice as many decades. If the 2/1 trend holds, half of all French workers will be below the American poverty line by the end of this decade”
I’m sure your info came from 1960 newspapers, cuz, if you read your aware economy papers of today, see what they say:
“According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), France is ranked just after the U.S. and Norway for hourly labor productivity, calculated by dividing gross domestic product by the number of hours worked. This calculation works to France’s disadvantage though, as Norway’s GDP is inflated by oil revenue, which isn’t entirely the fruit of a person’s labor.
Germany and Sweden, which are both well below France for hourly productivity, along with Singapore, which is lower still, don’t even bear comparison, while productivity in Europe’s “cheap” destination, Romania, is a full 80% lower”
uh, we beat the Germans in productivity !
http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/france-productivity
and we are the wealthiest:
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-french-work-the-least-in-the-world-but-are-richer-than-almost-everybody-2010-10
France has $36,500 GDP/Capita and works 1,453 hours per year. This equates to a GDP/Capita/Hour of $25.10. Americans, on the other hand, have $44,150 GDP/Capita but work 1,792 hours per year. Thus Americans only achieve $24.60 of GDP/Capita/Hour.
This puts the French Labor Alpha at about $0.50 GDP/Capita/Hour over the US. It may sound small at first, but add that up across millions of people, and a few decades. Now you’ve built a lesson for the rest of the world to learn.
http://www.businessinsider.com/are-the-french-the-most-productive-people-in-the-world-2009-8#ixzz1A6DNJhJI
and
Millionnaires : la France au troisième rang mondial
http://www.lefigaro.fr/impots/2010/10/11/05003-20101011ARTFIG00375-plus-de-deux-millions-de-millionnaires-vivent-en-france.php
and we work more than Germany: 38 h vs 35,7 h (Germany part-time Hartz IV jobs)
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=AVE_HRS
update your infos !!!!
aDuoist (suite)
France has $36,500 GDP/Capita and works 1,453 hours per year. This equates to a GDP/Capita/Hour of $25.10. Americans, on the other hand, have $44,150 GDP/Capita but work 1,792 hours per year. Thus Americans only achieve $24.60 of GDP/Capita/Hour.
This puts the French Labor Alpha at about $0.50 GDP/Capita/Hour over the US. It may sound small at first, but add that up across millions of people, and a few decades. Now you’ve built a lesson for the rest of the world to learn.
http://www.businessinsider.com/are-the-french-the-most-productive-people-in-the-world-2009-8#ixzz1A6DNJhJI
and
Millionnaires : la France au troisième rang mondial
http://www.lefigaro.fr/impots/2010/10/11/05003-20101011ARTFIG00375-plus-de-deux-millions-de-millionnaires-vivent-en-france.php
aDuoist (fin)
and we work more than Germany: 38 h vs 35,7 h (Germany part-time Hartz IV jobs)
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=AVE_HRS
update your infos !!!!
aDuoist
uh, the beginning of my comment doesn’t appear
“Trouble is, since WWII, for each decade that French workers out-performed American workers, the Americans out-produced the French by twice as many decades. If the 2/1 trend holds, half of all French workers will be below the American poverty line by the end of this decade”
I’m sure your info came from 1960 newspapers, cuz, if you read your aware economy papers of today, see what they say:
“According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), France is ranked just after the U.S. and Norway for hourly labor productivity, calculated by dividing gross domestic product by the number of hours worked. This calculation works to France’s disadvantage though, as Norway’s GDP is inflated by oil revenue, which isn’t entirely the fruit of a person’s labor.
Germany and Sweden, which are both well below France for hourly productivity, along with Singapore, which is lower still, don’t even bear comparison, while productivity in Europe’s “cheap” destination, Romania, is a full 80% lower”
uh, we beat the Germans in productivity !
http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/france-productivity
and we are the wealthiest:
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazing-french-work-the-least-in-the-world-but-are-richer-than-almost-everybody-2010-10
To Eggplant #94
Thanks for the reply. If we’re destined to slog through our Golden Years, it may as
well be fun.
Years ago, I went on a weekend trip to the Mohave Desert with my children, sponsored by our local museum. On a trip to Amboy Crater, we were ferried by the local “desert rats” in their four-wheel drive vehicles. My envoy had been employed by Kaiser Steel, until it went bust, along with the pensions (although a very lucrative spin-off of Kaiser was doing land development in Southwest California). He told me his weekday job was as a school bus driver transporting children from scattered rural residents on a three hour route to school, and then back at the end of the day.
He said he was indescribably happy with his life, and was glad the Rat Race disgorged him when it did…
I think about that often now, and draw my lessons from it.
I liked this comment on the NYT article:
“The West can afford to send 80% of its children to college; it cannot afford to put 80% of its workers in paper shuffling desk jobs.”
I took a look at the young woman’s photo, and I take back my suggestion as to one possible profession for her. I do wonder, has she ever considered marriage and children? (almost certainly not), and as she is a 29-year-old Italian woman, can she cook? Her prospects will dim every year from here on out.
MC…
The one over-arching advantage of France is atomic power. It means that she is not exporting money to turn the light on AND is not forced to mine staggering amounts of coal.
America used to have the global advantage of lowest energy prices. That situation is long gone due to politics.
Our morons on top blithely assume that we can have a weak/ terrible cost position WRT energy and still carry on. Fools.
Camo in Turkey
sure you are a “cador”
get me a Kebab right now, I’m hungry !
_______________________________________________
Blert
De Gaulle was a “visionnaire”
Bell Curve wrote:
“I took a look at the young woman’s photo, and I take back my suggestion as to one possible profession for her. I do wonder, has she ever considered marriage and children? (almost certainly not), and as she is a 29-year-old Italian woman, can she cook? Her prospects will dim every year from here on out.”
Not a realistic option in Italy, here’s why:
Italian males aren’t ready to leave their mamas until they’re at least in their mid 40s.
Anyone who travels to Italy will confirm the following; Sitting waiting to board the plane, the non Italian girls are wearing track suits, t shirts etc, beer bellies, muffin tops, fat asses all bursting forth out of every available opening, scruffy trainers or uggly boots on, but they’re relaxed and smiling.
Now look at the Italian girls,
You can see which they are straight away, not a hair out of place, perfect makeup, trim figures, a suit or immaculate jacket, top and skirt, shined high heel shoes or boots.
They’re sat there, rigid with insecurity, biting their nails.
Not only have they done a five year, master’s equivalent as a first degree, they’ve also been infected with every self hate and insecurity meme going.
Have kids?
You are joking?
Italy has had the lowest birthrate of any nation (not including the Vatican) for decades. Any births there are more likely, from the Nigerian girls who work the roadsides as hookers, or the North African, Albanian illegals or the Romanian Gypsies.
92 epignosis -OK I give up. I wasn’t intending a discussion of science fiction or science fact. I do not pretend to know what the universe is really all about and I don’t think anybody else does either. Even Einstein said “It’s enough to wonder at the mystery”.
All I wanted to impart was that so much negativity and doomsday talk is wearing, tiring and depressing. Not the best state of mind to do anybody any good or to motivate same.
Here is my modest proposal: Make the size of your Social Security check dependent on the number of children you have had and raised who are paying Social Security taxes.
Obviously it has problems in the details, but the point is clear. We have a generation of childless citizens who will be astonished to discover that there will not be enough future workers to provide them with Social Security Checks. The fault is their own.
happygrl @ 101 said:
“… I went on a weekend trip to the Mohave Desert with my children, sponsored by our local museum. On a trip to Amboy Crater, we were ferried by the local “desert rats” in their four-wheel drive vehicles. My envoy had been employed by Kaiser Steel, until it went bust, along with the pensions …”
Tough deal that your envoy lost his job and his pension. Supposedly that’s a common story with people who worked in the steel industry. I remember exploring Amboy Crater a zillion years ago. I was cruising around the desert on a joy ride and found it through pure chance. I’ve always wondered if Amboy Crater was still active (it looked like a recently formed cinder cone).
Kathy P @ 106 said:
“All I wanted to impart was that so much negativity and doomsday talk is wearing, tiring and depressing. Not the best state of mind to do anybody any good or to motivate same.”
We live in “interesting times”. I believe any honest assessment of our current economic and political situation would be negative if it were accurate. Getting out of this mess is going to be a long and difficult process. Ending the false “happy talk” is a useful first step towards seeking a remedy.
I just looked up Amboy Crater on Wikipedia, refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amboy_Crater
The Wikipedia article says that Amboy Crater is an “extinct North American cinder cone” but also says the last eruption could have been as recently as 500 years ago. In the context of geological time, 500 years is an insignificantly short period of time. Typical of Wikipedia to be self-contradictory.
From Marie Claude’s comment: “This puts the French Labor Alpha at about $0.50 GDP/Capita/Hour over the US.”
Well, for the ignorant who think that French industry/business is backwards, that would qualify as news. For the rest of us, that merely confirms what we’ve been saying: France is advanced, but it’s lazy. But hey, far be it from me to impose that famed Protestant work ethic on anyone. Given that the French have a relatively high standard of living, good for them! The trouble is that it turns out that this might not be sustainable after all.
“It may sound small at first, but add that up across millions of people, and a few decades…”
Now that’s just a completely and utterly nonsensical statement. In order to make France look better compared to the US, we’re not going to consider the total GDP but rather the per capita one, and not even that, but rather the per capita per hour one. But then, we’re going to wave our hands very hard and sum up that last statistic over people and decades?! Tango foxtrot?!
Kathy P @ 106 – Apologies. The effort was to illustrate how easily fundamental science can be distorted. I formed a mental image of you in the same situation in which Dorothy found herself. Toto pulling back the curtain and a booming voice commanding “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”. Of course, her judgment was correct. That’s exactly where her attention should be focused.
It is an unfortunate aspect of this carnal world, someone is always trying to deceive us with misdirection or cleverly crafted subterfuge.
FredD, the article is “american”, so make the deduction !
now, still up to 2008, we were in the top five by GDP, we even passed over UK in this very year !
Don’t believe the medias that say the French are lazy, when they know how to share time, time for work, time for leasures, time for family, time for eating, time for love, time for fighting…, a french man can enjoy the whole altogether, and still not being threatened to lose his house
GDP per capita hour is a nonsensical unit of comparison. GDP per worker-hour makes sense, but per capita GDP includes children and others not in the work force. Since Americans have more children than the French, that accounts for the difference.
What used to work pretty well: Young people marrying and having children in their twenties and thirties, living within their means & delaying gratification, and mothers raising their children instead of aimlessly looking for a job that could be fulfilled by a man trying to support his family. So sad to see the results of the 1960s feminism that I grew up with but ignored to drop out of college to marry and have children. My college education waited until my kids grew up.
I have grown nieces and nephews who have jobs, but still live with parents and will probably never get married or be parents themselves. The girls are masculinized (I can be anything) to have drive for careers only. Babies, are you crazy? Maybe when I’m 45.