Researchers Ask: Are People Better Off Than 50 Years Ago? (marketwatch.com)

opportunity and wealth versus happiness by goombah99 · 2017-12-23 17:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

Are people happier? Unlikely. But they may have greater opportunity and their impacts can be broader. But in the stories my grandfather told me I sense a great deal of exciting things. To go to town they had to marshal their team of horses and brush them out afterwards, in the cold (you could see the horse's breath). But that sort of chore and ritual can be deeply grounding, satisfying, and slower paced. Not worse. Maybe you don't accomplish as much on average? is that important?

--
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.

Re:opportunity and wealth versus happiness by ShanghaiBill · 2017-12-23 19:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

is that important?
Given that people, except for the Amish, universally abandoned that way of life as soon as they had an alternative, no, it is not important.

Those who were there vs those who were not by thinkwaitfast · 2017-12-23 17:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

73% among those 50 and older say life is better now compared with 59% who say this among 18- to 29-year-olds

Re: Those who were there vs those who were not by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 18:25 · Score: 4, Insightful

This! My boomer grandpa while working as a welder making 30 grand a year with three kids was somehow able to afford a house with not one but two garages, multiple motorcycles, always performing home additions and remodeling, as well as owning a camper with a permanent spot at the campground right on the water, as well as other trailers and jet skis. At one point he bought another house across the street to repair for fun then he sold it.
I made 178000, I have one kid and I've been dreaming about doing even a fraction of the things my grandfather did. The taxes I pay on the money are ridiculous and by the time my 1200 square foot house is paid and my car payments are paid I have about diddly-squat. I drive a 50 mpg diesel stick shift from 2003 with nearly 300k miles. What did my generation do differently? I'm supposed to be far more successful than him, he was a freaking factory worker.
Re: Those who were there vs those who were not by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 18:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

Leaving the house? Are you joking? You don't find work by pounding the pavement anymore. You can try it but everyone will tell you to apply online. My full time unpaid job is to find a job and I'm on the internet all day every day searching for work and applying for jobs. There's nothing out there except fake job postings. Companies simply use the internet to abuse the job market and run outsourcing scams.
Re: Those who were there vs those who were not by c6gunner · 2017-12-23 20:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

What did my generation do differently?
Get really shit at managing money?
I don't make even half of what you do, but I have a larger house which is almost paid off, and a 2 year old car which I bought last year just because I was getting tired of the old one. Whatever your problem is, it does not appear to be related to your paycheque, except tangentially. If you were making $400,000 a year I suspect you would somehow still manage to be broke.
Re:Those who were there vs those who were not by Solandri · 2017-12-23 23:11 · Score: 4, Interesting

The home ownership rate is higher today than in 1967.

Median home prices are about the same today as they were in 1967 after you adjust for inflation.

Mortgage interest rates are lower today than in 1967.

Median income is up for all quintiles since 1967 after adjusting for inflation, even the bottom two. Meaning the home price to income ratio has fallen since 1967 (you need to use a smaller percentage of your income to afford a home).

I'm sorry for your situation, but you are an outlier. Not representative of the norm. Home ownership is easier today than in 1967.

If you want to know why you Millenials are having a hard time buying a home, the answer is really simple. The savings rate has fallen from 12% in 1967 to about 6% today. Basically, you spent all your money instead of saving it. Contrast this to, say, the UK - where the savings rate has actually gone up since the 1970s. It's not all bad news though. Young people began saving more beginning about a decade ago. Unfortunately, you actually had a negative savings rate from about 1995-2007 (you were spending more than you made). So combine your higher savings rate with paying off your accumulated debt, and you can't afford to rent an apartment so you end up living in your parents' basement.
Re: Those who were there vs those who were not by Chris+Mattern · 2017-12-23 23:47 · Score: 3, Insightful

This! My boomer grandpa while working as a welder making 30 grand a year
30 grand fifty years ago would be over $200k today. Inflation is an amazing thing.
Re:Those who were there vs those who were not by AmiMoJo · 2017-12-24 01:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

In the UK housing is really unaffordable. We don't build enough houses, and older people see them as an asset which means they want to keep prices high.
In top of that, rents are very high too.
Many young people's only chance of owning a home is to wait for a relative to die and leave them some money. This creates a feedback loop where older people want their homes to remain expensive so they have more to pass on to their kids now that house prices are so high.
In top of that, university went from being free about 20 years ago to about 40-50k today. Student loans today are creating a huge black hole of bad debt for the next generation. Many, maybe the majority of students are never going to pay it all back.
So yeah, I wouldn't cite the UK as an example of a good system.

--
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Those who were there vs those who were not by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-24 01:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

You're using an old trick - averaging across multiple populations to hide the divergence.
Home ownership is up. Except below the age of 40 it's down. So really those over 50 have it better, those under 50 much much worse.
Median home prices are about the same. But there are lots of homes in areas that are useless if you want to get a job. Home prices in areas with jobs are up over 500% on their 1967 number.
Mortgage rates are lower. But credit scores for the under 40s are worse, their income is lower.
Income is up. But only for the older generation. Median income for those below 40 is down across the stats.
Take your disingenuous nonsense elsewhere.
Re:Those who were there vs those who were not by cahuenga · 2017-12-24 02:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

Real median earnings for males peaked in 1974: https://economix.blogs.nytimes... The reason "household income" is up is because there are far more person/hours being worked per household. Fifty years ago single incomes per household were quite common - Today everyone works.
Re:Those who were there vs those who were not by TimHunter · 2017-12-24 09:29 · Score: 2

I'm guessing you're a white man. Ask a woman or African-American whether they're better off than 50 years ago.
50 years ago the classified ads were divided into "Men Wanted" (engineers, lawyers, truck drivers, carpenters, etc.) and "Women Wanted" (secretaries, nurses, receptionists, etc.). If you were a woman you couldn't get just any job, no matter how qualified you might be. You could only get the jobs that people thought women were suited for. A woman's first job was to raise her family.
50 years ago African-Americans couldn't buy a house just anywhere. They had to buy a house in the neighborhoods that banks approved of for "their kind." They probably couldn't buy a house at all unless they could get a loan from a African-American-owned bank, if there was a African-American-owned bank anywhere around. They couldn't get just any job. They had to get jobs that were open to African-Americans: waiters, maids, servants of all kinds, laborers, etc.
I'm not even going to mention Hispanic people. 50 years ago there weren't that many in the U.S. and those that were here had even worse lives.
Re: Those who were there vs those who were not by sysrammer · 2017-12-24 09:51 · Score: 2

This! My boomer grandpa while working as a welder making 30 grand a year
30 grand fifty years ago would be over $200k today. Inflation is an amazing thing.
And this proves the thesis of TFA.

--
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Re: Those who were there vs those who were not by epine · 2017-12-25 06:40 · Score: 2

Median without knowing, min, max and average is a meaningless number.
You are delusional if you think the mean of a distribution is more inherently meaningful than the median.
Mathematically, the mean is far more tractable, not having the step behaviour of the median, so it certainly gets used more in equations (while spawning a small statistical cottage industry concerning the best way to handle distributional outliers).
The median is inherently immune to outliers, which is especially handy in making normative comparisons, where the value put forward as the "norm" has actually been experienced by a large, interior slice of the people being compared. min/max are pretty much always outliers. Least robust statistic ever invented (though often useful for sizing statistical visualizations).
Five-number summary is a good compromise: three normative values in the middle (including the median) plus the outlier brackets on either side (min/max).
Not that the mean is not even in here (though it does bound the mean from above and below; the mean of these bounds is fair estimate of the summary mean, and works to ((q0+q4)*1+(q1+q2+q3)*2)/8).
If your distribution happens to be somewhat symmetric around the mean, it's probably a damn fine estimate of the mean.
And if you distribution isn't somewhat symmetric around the mean, why are you using the mean in the first place? That's what all the statistical schnooks love about the mean: it walks around in broad daylight with a baby bulge, and barely any hapless, innumerate schlep notices.

Re:Short Answer: Yes and No by phantomfive · 2017-12-23 17:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

50 years ago J. Edgar Hoover was the head of the FBI. I complain about the current NSA/CIA/FBI (with valid reason) but things were worse under J. Edgar Hoover.

--
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."

How can they compare? by ugen · 2017-12-23 17:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Majority of world population (and pretty much everyone of the adult working age) either wasn't around 50 years ago or, if they were, were too young to really understand. Combine that with various confirmation biases, tendency to forget the negative and overstate how good things were back in the old days - and this question is, essentially, meaningless as a true gauge of change in life quality.

At most all it does is measure how whiny a given group of people is. And US residents are some of the whiniest in the world (but, unsurprisingly, France beats us on this one, if only just a bit)

Re:How can they compare? by sound+vision · 2017-12-23 19:04 · Score: 3, Informative

The surveys are designed to measure very specific sentiments people have. Knowing people's sentiments can be useful and interesting - most immediately to the fields of psychology and sociology, which in turn have an impact on basically everything humans are involved in. It doesn't measure actual quality-of-life, and doesn't pretend to. There are a bunch of studies that do try to measure quality-of-life, and off the top of my head, those studies pretty much agree with people's sentiments.

Answer: "No." by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 17:49 · Score: 2

Boy the way Glenn Miller Played
Songs that made the Hit Parade
Guys like us we had it made
Those were the days.

And you knew who you were then
Girls were girl and men were men
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again

Didn't need no Welfare state
Everybody pulled his weight
Gee our old Lasalle Ran great

Those were the days!

I would say yes by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 17:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Fifty years ago was 1967. This was before the oil crunch. I would say, if you were getting out of college with -any- degree, you pretty much were set for life, since jobs were plentiful, especially because government gave a shit about doing the job right, since the attitude of "lets make things as shitty as possible until we get sued" was not around.

If I graduated with an engineering degree back then, my life was pretty much set. Same with a natural sciences degree.

Now, degrees are worthless in the workplace and the time spent at a uni is time wasted where one could be gaining experience, and even with a degree, one barely would earn enough to survive.

Of course, with the Cold War in full swing, someone playing games with Russia, China, and countries hostile to the US wouldn't be taken as a "hero", as they seem to do now. Sell secrets back then, and it meant the firing squad.

Re:I would say yes by sdinfoserv · 2017-12-24 03:57 · Score: 2

That's not true. You could get a education deferment from being drafted. Once you graduated, you're position in the draft moved down because of age. That's why Vietnam was called the poor mans war.

Re:Short Answer: Yes and No by kqs · 2017-12-23 17:58 · Score: 5, Insightful

Note that TFA simply asked if people thought they were better off than two generations ago, rather than doing some type of measurement. It's like asking random people if the US deficit is larger now compared to 5 years ago; it's a good way to see what people believe but it doesn't measure or determine the truth.

In 1967 by Sigma+7 · 2017-12-23 18:01 · Score: 2

First, you should check what's back in 1967:

Cold war era. Basically a chance of nuclear warfare.Tensions have reduced nowadays.
Less chance of socialized health care. Also, health care was less advanced.
In 'Murica, Still clinging on the good-old racial ideology, and still being pissy about it. (If they didn't want such racial tensions, maybe they shouldn't have kidnapped those people en-masse.) Generally a solved problem provided people keep remembering how the alt-right actually works.
More difficult knowledge dissemenation. Sure there's the library, etc, but if you need something esoteric or need to start specializing, that's harder 50 years ago. Plus people can make their won portable libraries on computers, if desired.

Re:In 1967 by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 19:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think they were kidnapped by their own countrymen...or more accurately, by warring tribes. At least this is what I got out of when I was there. I had a friend teacher who assigned a paper to his class to describe something that helped his country out and one of the students turned in a paper on the slave trade.

Fifty Years Ago, America was Fighting in Vietnam. by dgatwood · 2017-12-23 18:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

Fifty years ago, Americans were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam war — a war so bloody and so largely useless that people were marching in the streets against it and fleeing the country to avoid it. In that same year, nationwide race riots led to over 100 deaths, and just three years later, the Kent State massacre happened, completely devastating Americans' trust in its government, followed shortly thereafter by Nixon's criminal conspiracy and resignation. And you can't even pretend that things were better a few years before that. After all, only fifty-five years ago, our country nearly ended the world during the Cuban missile crisis.

I hope and pray that most of the respondents didn't think very hard about that question before answering. Because if they did, then either our high school history books have become so whitewashed that nobody gets the full picture of just how bad things really were in America fifty years ago, the respondents slept through their American history classes, or the respondents did a little too much PCP in the 70s and don't remember the 60s anymore. Just saying.

--

Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

Re:The trend here... by Imrik · 2017-12-23 18:08 · Score: 2

Unless you include the country that's dead last on the list.

Hmm, my own case... by CrimsonAvenger · 2017-12-23 18:15 · Score: 5, Interesting

Old guy opinion follows:

Assuming I were my current age 50 years ago, I'd be long dead. The fix for my problems weren't even conceived of then. As is, in spite of my previous problems, and in spite of missing several internal organs, I expect I'll survive another 20 years or so (and in so doing, live longer than any of my grandparents managed).

Now, one could argue that being able to make the previous statement to a worldwide audience in almost realtime is a bad thing, but I also happen to think that that's one of the major improvements in life in the last 50 years (Yes, I was born rather before the internet existed).

And other things too numerous to mention. Hell, I was around before cable TV, much less the internet...

--

"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

Housing costs by locater16 · 2017-12-23 18:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

The price of the average home has nearly doubled in the US over the last 50 years. Similar in the UK. A large part of the reason for this is that while the efficiency of making almost anything has gone up over time, the efficiency for building construction has actually gone down for many first world countries over the past 50 years. There's any number of reasons. Ever tighter construction standards that have absolutely no unification, a tighter job market with a lot more demand for workers more skilled than what construction will pay, etc. But the biggest are that construction is still a million tiny contractors that can't afford large scale investments, and that the tech for construction hasn't advanced much in 50 years. Someone from decades ago would still recognize most of what a construction worker does today.

For all that robotics is set to change this majorly over the next decade. Brick laying robots and rebar tying ones and etc. will start replacing a lot of construction work. But it doesn't help this very moment. Shelter is the other half of that "food and" for basics a person anywhere would hope to have. And having soaring housing costs all over the place isn't helping. Anyone hoping to get elected in the US or UK soonish would do well to tell people they'll do something about it, even though they can't actually do much.

Re:Housing costs by Tablizer · 2017-12-23 19:54 · Score: 4, Interesting

The actual cost of the building is secondary to many other issues. Many communities actually don't want to make it easy to build new dwellings because they don't want traffic, immigrants, and change in general: for good or bad, people don't like change.
And the local gov't finds that they get more tax revenue if new houses cater to the wealthy, and therefore don't even try to make new housing cheaper. If newbies come in, they want rich newbies.

--
Table-ized A.I.
Re:Housing costs by wierd_w · 2017-12-23 20:54 · Score: 2

The majority of soaring house costs are from opportunity and scarcity costs.
EG, "Good jobs in the city--- City is mostly big business buildings, no housing. What little housing there is, is very high demand-- so HUGE FUCKING PRICES" Couple that with absurd city zoning, and you have spiraling costs.
As jobs get more and more concentrated into tinier and tinier geographic areas, this trend will continue. Throw in high wage disparities, and you end up with very strange things happening indeed.
It has little to do with the actual costs of house manufacture in terms of man hours, or lumber costs. It has much more to do with the fact that the likes of Elon Musk (and pals) is offering 100mil for a chunk of property, because he really, really wants it, driving up property values, and increasing scarcity because once he buys it for his new expanded campus, he never lets it go, and that property is essentially off the market forever.
What you have is housing insufficiency. (or more specifically, insufficient housing that is within an acceptable distance of suitable employment.)
You need one of two things to happen:
Big employers need to decentralize their location (Yeah, Apple and Google? Having ONE FUCKING HUGE CAMPUS is bad for people in Cupertino and the rest of the valley, ok? Break that shit up-- That's what VPNs are for, M'kay? The same goes for other big name employers driving up housing through scarcity.) so that the impact of their demands on the local real-estate market is not magnified.
City planners need to collectively grow some balls, and mandate that there be sufficient reserve housing available to accommodate the demolition of previously built high density structures while new ones are constructed, and to subsidize this so that costs are kept affordable. (which means telling Apple and Google to go fuck themselves when they want to expand their campus *AGAIN* by gobbling up that nearby housing block.)
That might sound very California centric, but like many things, California does things (and has consequences) before anyone else does, and unless you *LIKE* the housing situation there, now is the time to nix that shit.

Re: Short Answer: Yes and No by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 18:22 · Score: 2

Some kind of measurement like this?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/overdose-deaths-drive-down-u-s-life-expectancyagain-1513832460
2nd year of declining life expectancy

Re:The trend here... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 19:14 · Score: 2, Informative

Venezuela is not liberal, it's socialist. These are two quite different things, despite efforts to conflate the two..

Measurement of a Feeling by Roger+W+Moore · 2017-12-23 19:27 · Score: 4, Informative

Note that TFA simply asked if people thought they were better off than two generations ago, rather than doing some type of measurement.

Whether or not someone feels better off than they think they would have been 50 years ago is a purely subjective judgement. You might be able to prove that people actually are better off in terms of wealth, health etc. but it is still possible that they feel worse off despite this due to divisive politics, terrorist threats, mass immigration etc.

When it comes to how people feel the only practical measure is to ask them and trust their responses. A survey like this is a measurement of that subjective feeling.

Re:Measurement of a Feeling by ShanghaiBill · 2017-12-23 20:08 · Score: 2

it is still possible that they feel worse off despite this due to divisive politics, terrorist threats,
Politics was WAY more divisive in 1967 than it is today, with race riots in hundreds of cities, anti-war protests, etc. In the 1960s we had real home-grown terrorism.

mass immigration etc.
I live in San Jose, which has a higher ratio of immigrants than any other big city in America. We also have the lowest crime rate of any big city, the best schools in the country, and fantastic restaurants. Why would "immigration" make things worse?

When it comes to how people feel the only practical measure is to ask them and trust their responses.
Except that almost none of the people being asked can actually remember 1967.
Re:Measurement of a Feeling by Hal_Porter · 2017-12-23 20:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

Douglas Murray once said of Merkel that if she were honest she'd have said of the migrants "We have a bit more gang rape and beheading than we used to have, but then there's a wider range of cuisines."
http://www.kereport.com/2017/1...

The "Strange Death of Europe" centers on the 2015 migration crisis, which you all remember was the moment when Angela Merkel massively exacerbated an already existing problem by announcing, unilaterally, that the external and internal borders of Europe were basically dissolved. In a single act, the mass movement of people that had been going on for decades sped up exponentially, so that Germany in a single year took in an additional 2 percent of its population. Sweden took in an additional almost 3 percent of its population. This is all part of a pattern. I say that has been going on for many decades. And, just like those previous decades, what happened after the 2015 crisis was that politicians and the media found excuses to justify something that would have happened anyway. So, for instance, German citizens and others were told that this mass migration, millions of people into Europe, was there would be a net economic gain for their society, that it would enrich their society. Now, actually, all of the studies that I have gone over on this show that, at best, most such migration cannot be called to be any kind of economic gain. A study in Britain showed that over a 15 year period, migrants took out 95 billion more in services than they put in taxation. And, of course they would. If you go to another country, you don't speak the language. You don't have the skills. It's going to be a very long time, before you've put in anything into the welfare system, remotely like the amount that you and your family will have taken out. But, this is one of the arguments that is made.
And, by the way, just as in all of the decades after the war, so in the post-2015 moment, the governments that came up with these explanations had to hedge around the facts, so that just like the labor government, after 1997, they had to pretend that the average migrant was a Luxemburgian hedge funder. And this is just one of the lies that gets told to the people, because once that one is shut down, once, for instance, you notice that the number of people who have been added to Germany's welfare bill in the last year, is almost exactly the number of the people who came in in 2015, once you go over that lie, you get to another one, which the German people and others were told; which is that we are an aging population. We are a graying population, and then, therefore, we need, obviously, to bring people in, to keep us and our society into the standards to which we've become accustomed. Of course, this argument always ignores one extraordinary thing, which none of the politicians ever seem to recognize, which is the startling fact that migrants get old as well. Amazingly enough, it's not just us Europeans who suffer the aging process. Who knew? But, of course, if you do believe in that idea, that you need to keep on bringing people to keep yourself in the custom that you're now used to, you get, what I describe as, the pyramid problem in migration. You keep having to bring in more and more people all the time, to keep yourselves in that sustainable societal moment.
So once you get the one of, well, okay maybe they don't make us richer. Maybe the aging population thing doesn't work. You get to another one, which is diversity. It doesn't matter if we're financially poorer. It doesn't matter, because we're so much more culturally rich. Now, I should say that there is something in this. What society - Europeans certainly wouldn't do this. What society doesn't want to know as much of interest and culture as the world has to offer? Who doesn't want to know as much about the world, and about the ideas of the world as possible? But, of course, the

--
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Re:Measurement of a Feeling by Gavagai80 · 2017-12-23 23:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

If Merkel were being honest, she'd say "crime may be up a bit, but now we have some young people to do the work so we'll all be able to keep our health care and retire comfortably instead of facing a demographic crisis that'll make our generation work into their 90s." Europe's birthrates are below replacement level, so the options are either find some migrants or take away all the benefits the baby boomer generation is counting on.

--
This space intentionally left blank
Re:Measurement of a Feeling by LynnwoodRooster · 2017-12-24 04:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

You act like race riots and political riots don't happen. Or that domestic terrorism doesn't exist.
As far as immigration goes, Miami has a larger percentage of immigrants than San Jose and note that Los Angeles is not very far behind San Jose. And the violent crime rates of Miami and Los Angeles dwarf that of San Jose. San Jose kind of bucks the trends - I think having billions and billions of dollars in "sillycon valley" makes that happen?
Or perhaps it's not the fact they're immigrant, but whether or not those immigrants are here legally? After all, illegal immigrants are about 3.4% of the population but they overwhelmingly commit most of the violent and drug crime in the US.
Or perhaps it has to do with the race of those immigrants? You do realize that 61.4% of all immigrants in San Jose are from Asia, and Asians have some of the lowest crime rates. So maybe the fact your immigrant neighbors are here legally, making big money, and from ethnic backgrounds that for whatever reason have a much lower crime rate, you're in a unique spot and cannot being to extrapolate your experience to nationwide - because it is so different than most of the rest of the US?

--
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Re:Measurement of a Feeling by Dorianny · 2017-12-24 10:13 · Score: 2

Japan has been trying to do that for decades now without any success. Japan's population has shrunk by over a million in the past 5 years and it is on track to loose a full %35 by the end of the century. Japan is not alone, in fact every developed nation would have a declining population if it weren't for immigration. It is a simple fact that everywhere childhood mortality is low, families prefer to have fewer babies in order to concentrate their resources on them. The only place on earth still experiencing large population growth is the extremely poor sub-Saharan Africa

Re:The trend here... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 19:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

Liberal and conservative are not opposites.
"Liberal" means in favor of liberty. For example, if you want the freedom to own guns, or to retain untaxed property, you are liberal.
The opposite is "authoritarian."
"Conservative" means resisting change, as in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
The opposite is "progressive" which views change as good because it's "progress," fixing things that actually are broke.

Of course, the matter of whether the status quo is broke or not is opinion, and hinges on who is benefitting from it. Those who are doing well say it ain't broke, and tend to be conservative, and those who are hurt by it say it is broke, and tend to be progressive.

But for liberal and conservative to be opposed, can only happen when the status quo is unfree, and change increases freedom. Unfortunately, this is frequently the case, and results in conservativism aligning with authoritarianism.

In any case, the point is, if you are a conservative for valid reasons, don't call your opponents liberals. Call them progressives. Otherwise you are revealing yourself to be authoritarian, and on no one like authoritarians, because they are jerks.

Re:Liberal way, too by Z80a · 2017-12-23 20:07 · Score: 2

Nothing is perfect obviously.
But when you compare a liberal place like most of the europe or us to some authoritarian conservative/socialist country, well, generally the liberal one have a much better economy and happier people in general.
It's like that when the population can choose who rules em and can choose who they buy their stuff from, those in power tend to deliver a better service to not lose the spot to their rivals.

For what percentage of the population? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 20:20 · Score: 2, Informative

Unless you were a big name, or ran afoul of him in his/your travels, Hoover simply lacked the manpower compared to what is possible today.

The FBI is bigger in manpower, funding, and technology than it was 50 years ago, and apathy surrounding privacy and police conduct has only made it worse.

Re: The trend here... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-12-23 21:04 · Score: 2

And its issues are in large part authoritarianism versus reactionary forces and an economy that lacks diversity. The Nordic nations are also fairly socialist, but make it work.

Re:Short Answer: Yes and No by Wizardess · 2017-12-23 21:42 · Score: 2

And this surely points up how poorly educated younger people not alive and especially not adult 50 years ago have become. Some things are worse, in the name of making them better. Some things are so much better it's laughable to say we're worse off than 50 years ago.

50 years ago it was all about the ugly American. Today it's about the gulled stupid American. I expect those hoary old ethnic jokes about Poles, Russians, "Negros", "Wops" "Micks", and so forth to be recycled about Americans who neither know nor appreciate what we have today.

50 years ago I was just about to get my MSEE degree from Univ of Mich. I know first hand what it was like then. Some is now worse, including some important things. An utterly amazing whole LOT is better. I can live relatively poor today far far FAR better than I could live extremely wealthy in 1967.

{^_^}

Re:Venezuela: "political unrest, economic turbulan by lucasnate1 · 2017-12-23 22:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

Because western europeans also live in socialist country and they have much better lives than most money worshipping yankees.

--
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction

Stupid American Responses by dcw3 · 2017-12-23 23:56 · Score: 4, Informative

So, the response from Americans likely had a lot of people who weren't alive 50 yrs ago. I was 9 back then, so let me help you. It was 1967

1. We were in a hugely unpopular war in Vietnam.
2. There were race riots in the streets of Detroit...I lived there
3. Most people had 3-5 channels of black and white TV that typically ended around midnight.
4. Few people places air conditioning
5. Home telephones typically had "party lines"...you shared your number with neighbors and took turns.
6. There were no ATMs, grocery scanners, cell phones, personal computers, or even calculators.
7. Only about 50% of people completed high school...you can check census facts. Less than 20% had a 4 yr degree
8. Life expectancy was 14 years lower

I would argue that families were more tight knit back then, but other than that, if you think you're not better off today, you'll have to come up with some facts to back it up.

--
Just another day in Paradise

Compare generations by rbrander · 2017-12-24 04:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

I'm definitely richer at 59 than 9. Solved.

The real comparison is to my Dad, of course, 38 years older than I. I'm somewhat better off than he, but not much. Not really enough, considering I got two college degrees and he worked his way up to "engineer" from "surveyman" (when "engineer" was a job description, not always licensed) from only high school. He could afford to retire at the same age, actually had a bigger house. But my place is better located, and I'll be able to manage a little more travel. Much of that, however, comes from our inheritances from parents - he got almost nothing from his, same for my wife's parents.

A younger friend of mine who is about 60 years younger than my Dad, recently mentioned that when she wished aloud to just quit, her son joked she couldn't afford not to work unless she has a magic wand that makes money. Her nine-year-old was dead right. My parents never *needed* two incomes the way my friend does. Dad supported three kids, bought a 1600 sf. split level for us, took us on vacations to Disneyland and Mexico, had us all in an athletic club for the pool and skating rinks - on the salary of a highway construction engineer, never got past mid-level.

Oh, and all three of kid kids went to college, needing only summer jobs to pay the tuition; the only family expense was free rent and food.

As a report from Piketty's institute just confirmed ( https://boingboing.net/2017/12... ) "inequality in the Americas has been soaring since 1980", shortly after Dad retired. The Reagan/Thatcher Revolution ("Mulroney" here in Canada) won, and my young friend who can't quit her job, lost.

Re:The trend here... by smugfunt · 2017-12-24 06:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is correct. There is another source of confusion though: "liberal" has two quite different meanings.

One is the opposite of authoritarian, as you say.

The other refers to the political ideology of Capitalism. "Free" markets (especially in labor), laissez-faire government, "sound" finance. What most Americans think of as Conservatism is more properly called Liberalism.

The Democratic Party exploits this confusion to co-opt people with a liberal attitude into supporting the party's conservative agenda. Its emphasis on identity politics gets people all riled up about things which can have no effect on the power structure or economic status quo.

Re:Short Answer: Yes and No by Billly+Gates · 2017-12-24 07:37 · Score: 2

I see lots and lots of responses here saying it's so much better? Do you make 6 figures??

If you're not an engineer or programmer you're fucked. Times were better. With a bachelor's degree you could take in 6 figures easily adjusted for inflation. Tons of cheap housing in New York or Chicago for young people. Everyone owned a home no problem etc

Things are terrible now. Especially outside of your nice coding jobs.

--
http://saveie6.com/

Re: The trend here... by OneAhead · 2017-12-25 05:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

That would only be true in American speak, where decades of anti-socialist brainwashing have successfully led to an almost-universal conflation of "socialist" and "communist". In most of the rest of the world, "socialism" (or more precisely "social democracy", though that doesn't roll off the tongue as well) is pretty much synonym to "strong welfare", and something different from "communism", which would refer to one particular, notoriously misguided attempt at implementing socialism.

Yes, the Soviet Union called itself "Socialist". North Korea also calls itself Democratic... Neither gets the monopoly on That Word.

Slashdot Mirror

Researchers Ask: Are People Better Off Than 50 Years Ago? (marketwatch.com)

48 of 357 comments (clear)