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Ask Slashdot: Did Baby Boomers Break America? (time.com)
"Automation taking jobs is only one symptom of a larger problem," argues an anonymous Slashdot reader, sharing a link to this excerpt from Steven Brill's new book Tailspin, which seeks to identify "the people and forces behind America's fifty-year fall -- and those fighting to reverse it." The excerpt has this intriguing title: "How Baby Boomers Broke America."
As my generation of achievers graduated from elite universities and moved into the professional world, their personal successes often had serious societal consequences. They upended corporate America and Wall Street with inventions in law and finance that created an economy built on deals that moved assets around instead of building new ones. They created exotic, and risky, financial instruments, including derivatives and credit default swaps, that produced sugar highs of immediate profits but separated those taking the risk from those who would bear the consequences. They organized hedge funds that turned owning stock into a minute-by-minute bet rather than a long-term investment... Regulatory agencies were overwhelmed by battalions of lawyers who brilliantly weaponized the bedrock American value of due process so that, for example, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule protecting workers from a deadly chemical could be challenged and delayed for more than a decade and end up being hundreds of pages long. Lawyers then contested the meaning of every clause while racking up fees of hundreds of dollars per hour from clients who were saving millions of dollars on every clause they could water down...
As government was disabled from delivering on vital issues, the protected were able to protect themselves still more. For them, it was all about building their own moats. Their money, their power, their lobbyists, their lawyers, their drive overwhelmed the institutions that were supposed to hold them accountable -- government agencies, Congress, the courts... That, rather than a split between Democrats and Republicans, is the real polarization that has broken America since the 1960s. It's the protected vs. the unprotected, the common good vs. maximizing and protecting the elite winners' winnings... [I]n a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the forces that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.
Brill argues that the unprotected need things like "a realistic shot at justice in the courts," writing that instead "the First Amendment became a tool for the wealthy to put a thumb on the scales of democracy." And he shares these statistics about the rest of America today:
As government was disabled from delivering on vital issues, the protected were able to protect themselves still more. For them, it was all about building their own moats. Their money, their power, their lobbyists, their lawyers, their drive overwhelmed the institutions that were supposed to hold them accountable -- government agencies, Congress, the courts... That, rather than a split between Democrats and Republicans, is the real polarization that has broken America since the 1960s. It's the protected vs. the unprotected, the common good vs. maximizing and protecting the elite winners' winnings... [I]n a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the forces that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.
Brill argues that the unprotected need things like "a realistic shot at justice in the courts," writing that instead "the First Amendment became a tool for the wealthy to put a thumb on the scales of democracy." And he shares these statistics about the rest of America today:
- For adults in their 30s, the chance of earning more than their parents dropped to 50% from 90% just two generations earlier.
- In 2017, household debt had grown higher than the peak reached in 2008 before the crash, with student and automobile loans staking growing claims on family paychecks.
- Although the U.S. remains the world's richest country, it has the third-highest poverty rate among the 35 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development...
Has he identified the source of a societal malaise? Leave your own thoughts in the comments.
And is Brill's thesis correct? Did baby boomers break America?
Baby boomers: The transistor. The laser. The internet. Manned moon landings. Manufacturer to the world.
Millennials: Facebook. Twitter. Selfies. Selfie sticks.
The root of all of these problems is that bribery is legal in the US. I would imagine that we have probably the most corrupt government in the modern world. Make bribery illegal again, and most of these problems would (eventually) go away, because we'd have a government that represented the citizens again.
I don't respond to AC's.
See title.
Is it? Here's $1 million if you'll change your opinion.
Not all boomers were involved in the financial frauds and messes. Those did indeed cause trouble, should have been blocked as illegal right away.
However, our government has been lousy at catching abuses, at least as far back as the 1800s. Hear of the "robber barons" of that time? The term was not spuriously given.
Boomers have contributed in many technical fields, for example, and without those contributions the state of computing and microelectronics would be far back of where it is. But to understand that you do need to know a little history.
It should be noted that the push to get EVERYONE able to buy a house came from government, and that broke down the finance rules that kept the sharks out, leading to the takeover by so many fraudsters (of many ages). As I recall this started in the Clinton administration, but effects were not instantly obvious. To really screw things up takes a computer, and to totally gefuck the world takes a government.
Most of us did the best we could with what we had to work with. I hope you do the same, and your children will complain. And so it goes across generations, the way it always has.
They produced Chenney and the Koch Brothers. What more evidence do we need?
Blame Hitler and WWII. Sheesh!
Plastics
We should remove all campaigning laws. Having no limits to campaigning would sort the problem out on its own.
First up: The generational split is kind of a cheap division of humans in general. Few splits are really good though - but the artificial grouping on vague birth year ranges is particularly a weak way to draw meaning. Like, zodiac-level weak.
Even what we DO commonly believe about generations is largely about misunderstanding them. The whole "baby boomers were hippies" notion was largely based on statistical exceptions - sure, you could point to groups of hippies, but they largely did NOT represent the group's popular view.
All that said - sure - the net effect of a glut of children, who largely grew up believing more conservatively than their Roosevelt-era parent generation - is largely a negative in economic terms.
They took a nation that was able to produce large amounts of industrial-scale capability, and basically sold it for a large number of houses and cars (1980s), and now are at the stage where they are no longer economically productive, but instead are both voting to reduce social medical care, while using extensive amounts of medical care.
It's basically a triple whammy on the very system that enriched them. That's on average though - and largely the reason we got Trump - basically the old/white group was the dominant contributors.
So, they erroneously get credit for progress they largely didn't actually support, then vote against their self-interest, while stripping the nation of resources. Yeah - for an arbitrary group, they kind of aren't that helpful on average.
From that standpoint everyone is at fault.
Actually it was the extreme postwar naivete of "the greatest generation", the generation that fought world war 2.
They broke the world in an attempt to build a better, non-violent world for their children --- the baby boomers, who grew up to be a bunch of assholes.
Oh the BITTER irony.
/thread
There aren't any coding jobs. Boomers outsourced all the coding jobs.
The world is always on the verge of collapse, whether it's food or energy or other goods distribution.
If nothing is done to maintain that, the world will slowly descent into some chaos. Trying the blame game is only done to force people in a specific mindset, and come up with a "solution" to "fix" it.
cap: farming
Letters from my GGGfathers would call you not only a liar, but a dupe. Your knowledge of actual history somehow permits you to make such a statement using the Ayn Rand lens of life, which is a zero-sum observation.
Although the US-UK affinity is pretty unholy, there were lots of reasons to enter WWI. And bankrupting the Russians was the way to crack the Berlin Wall, perhaps the only wise thing R Reagan ever did.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
There's just one thing that broke America: Hubris.
The belief that America is the greatest, best, top, first, you-name-it broke it beyond repair.
Hubris always turns a champion into a loser, from sports to finance to politics.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Probably good points but at risk of being misunderstood.
Can I clarify that there are 2 points made in this comment:
1) The North American civil war was more about money than slavery.
2) WW1 was a cost to the USA.
and 3, which seems to be implied:
3) Although WW2 created a situation that put the USA economy in pole position, the trend of inequality started by Lincoln via WW1 economics continued.
Viewing things as 'there was always this trend of inequality building from the start behind everything else going on and we need to see past all the economic changes' is a bit complicated.
I view things more from a money view point, which is - USA was wealthy after WW2 and it's tough at the top so it's been on it's way down. Inequality, things like this come 2nd place to the effects of wealth in general.
A blog I run for the wealth
These are the guys who went from the "we" generation of the '60s to the "me" generation of the '70s. It couldn't be their fault.
The problem with Brill is that 90% of the population can't keep up with him or argue with his points. This is likely almost entirely correct and truthful with plenty of support work to make a strong cogent set of arguments (as strong as can be expected of something outside of science.)
I'm not sure of the practicality of these academic exercises when something for the masses is likely needed.
"The Century of the Self" documentary is amazingly good considering it doesn't have the ability to be dense like a book can. I expect Brill to approach similar themes from different angles as that documentary. It's not just the boomers to blame; they are both the victims (of society) and the biggest perpetrators upon growing up.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The blame is not on an entire generation, but on select individuals of that generation. The one-percenters, no matter what the age, are still the culprits.
Retort: Who are They?
Isn't that a question of density of population? Like in population has grown so much that everything is getting scarcer for everybody. I know the US are huge (I'm European), but nonetheless, some areas are so overcrowded that it's impossible but for the wealthiest to buy a property. The same goes for jobs: there are already a million people with the same skills than you but better at them, and available from all over the world thanks to globalization. It's becoming more and more difficult to stand out and not just be useless. You can make similar reasoning for almost all the things that people in their 30s have more difficulties to obtain than their parent. Isn't that all linked to the size of the population compared to the size of our little planet?
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Don't want to pay market wages for basic labor? No problem, just hire an illegal.
Don't want to pay market wages for skilled labor? No problem, just bring in a visa worker.
He knows, and he tried to fix it. In the end, he only have succeeded. He gave to the rich, but unfortunately, those damn poor are still there with their willing hands out! MUST! END! THIS! SOON! Vote Republican and finish them off!
When we were rounding up the First Nations and keeping the negros in their place. Over time we name soft and weak and overly concerned with everyone's well being and ignored the well being of out own children. Hence new more barbaric and virile nations will rise up and supplant us. We are seeing this with Mexico and China. It is the story as old as time. Don't blame the baby boomers. Blame the older generation that tamed the West. For when there are no external enemies to fight such as Indians or bears, it is only natural to find internal enemies to fight e.g. republicans or democrats.
If you want to make America a great and cohesive society again you need to breed a bunch of man eating tigers and let the, loose in out gun free cities. I guarantee that a people under attack by man eating tigers will stop worrying about transgender bathrooms. But then again I'm a homosexual Nazi Communist so I probably don't know what I'm talking about.
“She’s the epitome of meritocracy. I mean, first-generation wealth, Wellesley, Yale Law School, always prepared, always does her homework, articulate, perfectly spoken — but also perceived as cold and calculating,” Brill said.
"Waah intergenerational politics makes people click on headlines, so click away masses!" /.
FFS shut up, it's just more clickbait. This shit needs to stop appearing on
At the very least I expect the clickbait on here to actually be somewhat related to "clickbait for nerds". Not "clickbait for whiny morons."
The Western world used to plan for generational time periods. Companies were set up with the intent of providing a regular profit over time, slowly increasing, but overall being reliable producers.
Back in the 70s, some people started to decide that they could start selling bits of these to make a fast buck, so you could buy a company, split it up into components, and sell bits of it for more than you paid for it. Voila, instant profit, and it'd only take a year.
Then investors started to want these immediate gains more and more. So more of the regular reliable producers were split up.
That put the regular producers up against the profit margins of the breakers, and many were written off as being "not profitable", making it tough to get loans to continue operating, meaning they had to sell up (which went to the breakers to get bits sold off at profit to financiers).
Investors getting used to the fast money only started to look at the immediate future. Can they make money in the next year? If yes, then all's shiny!
Very very few people in the West are now asking the question "Where do we see ourselves in 50 years?". If you're not asking yourself that question, you can easily find yourself on a path that looks rosy for the next few years, but with a huge drop that you just don't see coming. Or by the time you do, there's sod all you can do about it; the inertia of all the short termist vision catches up with you.
Instant gratification isn't a long term strategy.
What does this have to do with science and technology?
Yes, only rich christians should be allowed to commit genocide to obtain natural resources?
I was born at the end of the baby boom, we came of age in the late 70's and early 80's, when the country was going through a backlash against the counterculture and political tumoil of the late 60's and early 70's. Gone was the optimism and hope for a better world replaced by greed. Everyone was trying to get MBA or Law degrees. Engineering, science, the arts? Most people we're interested. As my age group entered the workforce and started and gained experience they only seemed to care about making money, and as much money as fast as possible. And remember, it wasn't only Wall Street. The whole Dot Com boom was awash from get-rich-quick speculative investing from the Boomers and managed by the late boomers. The whole cynical stupidity of the browser wars was driven by assholes to make the web into electric metaphors for things that the Boomers knew how to monetize.
The visionaries behind the Web were outgunned by the banal greed of Bill Gates who is a classic Robber Baron, who is now in the stage of life where he is trying to buy redemption with good deeds. And even then, his good deeds are making him money. I've heard this from a number of NGOs who have worked with his foundation. They don't give unless they can get. And then we had the fake hippie Steve Jobs who helped spark the PC revolution and then spent the last half of his life doing everything in his power to crush it and turn general computing devices that could be customized and extended to fit you into consumer electronics that forced people to do things the way that Jobs wanted you to do.
For every Woz there were a hundred or more Jobs. Woz and those like him, Steward Brand is an early boomer, Linus is a later boomer but they are the rare exceptions that prove the rule. So yeah, the late boomers, we really did and do suck.
As someone who will never get to touch a pension while Boomers guaranteed themselves thousands of dollars a month on top of social security, yes, they did. I'm only 31 and have been putting money into a 401k for a only a few years now, so I'll be lucky if I even get to retire before 70.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Delays in the implementation of a safety regulation? How does that cause the kind of structural problems we see? Would everything be great if regulation didn’t have to face due process?
Yes, all the time and energy spent trying to secure a government advantage is productivity lost. The solution is less government power and money for rich people to fight over. Then instead of using the country’s talent to shuffle pieces around the board, that talent could be used for productive work.
Baby Boomers beat bigger BOOMS, Baby Boomers blow BUSTS. Baby Boomers boot babbling BEINGS, Right into the dust. Boomers benchmark black and BLUE, Boomers balance their BALLS. Boomers bet its BITTER, There up for building walls. These Babies love blowing bubbles, and bitching about that war. just to surf down some more sympathy, if only to break the BORE. Boomers blundered even brunch, and it wasnt even time for lunch. So they all went off to blame thier hunch, And thats when it came - the massive crunch. Of all the bubbles on our behalf, And of all their many obsequesous staff. They took too long to consider the candor, Of the time it took to meander. So now the boomers learn'd to hate, so they keep it going and deliver the fate. Now they fear where ever they tread, As they rightfully should, because our soverignty is dead.
There are a variety of policy and market reasons for the transfer of wealth from young to old.
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* One reason for the age-based increasing income increasing inequality is the transfer of wealth and purchasing power from the society at-large to existing asset holders, who are typically older. And this is done via monetary policy.
Monetary policy is about trying to bring about prosperity via manipulation of the money supply. The net result of monetary policy is the transfer of purchasing power from one group to another. For example, inflation doesn't involve a transfer of money, but it makes a saver poorer and a debtor less poor by changing the purchasing power each one has, by changing the value of the currency. One uses monetary policy to stoke or reduce inflation. Or QE - Quantitative Easing. It was printing money to buy bonds (government debt and mortgage debt). The printing of money has some side effect - it is not consequence-free. The recipients of that money firehose were made wealthier. And the asset bubbles which resulted also made existing asset holders (physical (e.g. real estate) and financial - stock market went from 11K (2011) to 25K (2017) in six years) wealthier.
Governments through the ages have always wanted easy, controllable, predictable prosperity, but in reality achieving prosperity is much trickier and chaotic. It requires first the correct intelligence, temperament and values of the population. Then the population interacts with the natural world and creates legal and physical and security infrastructure. Then, more chaotic, is the creation of items that people value (not merely to satisfy speculative demand (which is quite volatile), like items to gamble on, but things that will satisfy consumption demand (which is more persistent) - demand to consume those items, both goods and services and perhaps non-speculative financial products). And then the march of technology to continue to improve social welfare and the standard of living. And then through some luck, that value and purchasing power must be distributed in some semi-equitable way to the population so that it can consume those things they value.
That's complicated and volatile and not guaranteed. Manipulating the money supply is much simpler. Prosperity through the stroke of a pen. Unfortunately, if it were possible, Haiti or Sierra Leone could become prosperous in short order. Obviously, that will not happen. But manipulating the money supply and the value of the currency to bring about prosperity has been a siren song for policy makers and leaders over the millennia. And the side effect today has been the transfer of wealth from young to older.
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* Also, straight up preying on the young by using them as pass through entities for government money firehosed to the education sector. The young get stuck with the debt, and education costs escalate because they're being paid by our rich Uncle Sam. Yet we all see the reports on how much wealthier those with degrees are versus those without.
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* Next medical costs and insurance. There are both policy and market-based reasons for this.
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* Then, offshoring of manufacturing and intellectual property - offshoring of the production of value. Again both policy and market-based reasons for this.
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* Finally, we're on the dawn of a new industrial revolution, with software automation. The effect is the same as what happened with the industrial revolution - one person could create a much larger amount of product because of technology. To summarize, it was the "consolidation of the production of value."
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So - the net result of all of these factors? Young people are f-cked.
Yup
Ya know, in all of these Baby Boomer articles, I have never, ever heard anybody come up with a theory on the rampant deflation that modern societies seem to be going through.
Yeah, you heard me- deflation. Japan, South Korea, most of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada are all either experiencing serious deflation, or *effectively* have zero inflation, and have for at least a decade (Japan has been experiencing this for almost thirty years at this point).
At the same time, certain things that are made/done domestically in those countries- health care, land/housing, schooling (in general- not JUST college, but all schooling in general), furniture, etc.- are all increasing in cost wildly.
This deflationary spiral seems to be the biggest problem that first world societies have today. Nothing has been able to stop it- lower taxes, higher taxes, capital injection, investment, negative interest rates, quantitative easing - NOTHING. It also seems to me to be the biggest reason behind many of the woes of the Millenial (and to a lesser extent, Gen X) generation. Much bigger than "BOOMERS BROKE EVERYTHING".
So why doesn't anybody ever address this?
It's dead simple to find proof it was about slavery; they stated it openly and on the record many times. Economics was the driver behind slavery; it is for many things... There are always multiple factors involved, but the institution of slavery was by far the largest factor and the reasons for slavery is beside the point...why they needed to believe in slavery is breaking things down; you can always do that and just keep going as far as you'd like. This is often a tactic to divert attention by focusing on underlying causes instead (you can always go until you get to flawed humanity then to the devil or whatever.)
FYI:
Lincoln also greatly undermined the free press! He cut funding; prior to him the press got a few % of the national GDP! I forget the number but today it would be one of the biggest government programs (subsidized not run by gov) after healthcare/retirement (military if you consider that a service.)
The civil war also led to the birth of the modern corporation of today and a massive empowerment of the banks, which led to their take over of policy and later the great depression...
FYI: The Civil War began BEFORE Lincoln got started; and many historians rank Buchanan as the worst because of his role in that war (though he did try to stop it, just didn't do a good job at it... because he sucked?)
Lincoln WON because he finally realized burning cotton would bankrupt the south. (Cotton was so big they based their money on it instead of gold!) Checkmate. It was always about cotton; that is true-- they have to live with themselves so they rationalize a culture of slavery to fuel their economy and "way of life" which many people will die for... Just like if you told meat eaters to stop eating beef for the health of the planet... that is almost civil war kind of stuff right there. Give me burgers or give me death!
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Linus is a later boomer
Linus Torvalds was born in 1969. He's Gen X, not a Boomer.
This doesn't surprise me in the least. America is due to experience the fate of Ancient Rome. Our elected leadership is corrupt and self-serving, income inequality and average debt is rising, and our infrastructure is decaying. Methinks revolution is not too far off.
Adjusted for inflation it takes about a dollar and a half today to equal a dollar in 2000. The chances of someone in the middle class making the same in inflation-adjusted dollars as their parents is damn near 0%.
I was born in 1979, but I agree that the anti-union, anti-environment, pro-Wall St greed of the 80's is what is causing a lot of problems. Life because a monetary competition. It wasn't good enough to just be equal to your neighbors, you had to find a wife that could pull in some serious money and move into a bigger house with a new SUV on lease every few years. If your friends bought a $50,000 pickup truck, you have to get a $60,000 one. And that is before the idea of trophy wives and the mess that has caused to the dating world. It is hard enough finding a girl in your early 20's, now you have to compete with guys in their 40's and 50's who have the money to fly them to Europe on vacation and provide a nice house.
I think I'm the first to post this here, so here goes a very brief (and therefore not strictly accurate) account of what's happening...
Marx (Karl, not Groucho) and Engels predicted this in their books Das Kapital, 1876-1894. They understood the nature of capitalism in that is was a very effective system for increasing wealth inequality, i.e. it helps the rich to get richer by making the poor poorer, by exerting continuous downward pressure on earned income (wages, salaries, and contractual work) and producing ever more extreme mechanisms for the wealthy (owners) to accrue increasing control over capital for their own benefit.
Baby boomers, millennials, the gig economy, precarious employment, anti-union legislation, political and legal corruption, environmental degradation, unhealthy and dangerous working conditions, immoral and illegal wars, racism and police brutality, etc., are all symptoms of capitalism working as it is supposed to. Nothing's broken. This is how our chosen economic system works by design.
The "Golden Age of Capitalism", post WWII until the mid-1970s, was the result of massive wealth redistribution, e.g. tax payer funded public infrastructure building that created millions of jobs, rapid expansion and subsidy of further and higher education, and progressive taxation, whereby the the richest paid the highest rates of taxes in order to fund govt. infrastructure projects, education, etc., starting from after the Great Depression, which itself was caused by massive wealth inequality. In other words, the USA enjoyed a brief period of unprecedented economic prosperity because it adopted a form of socialist policies known as Keynesianism.
What did I miss?
BTW, this guy made a whacky film that runs through the central concepts modern life as we experience them today. It's dense, covering a lot of ground in a very short time, so worth using the pause button while you think through what he's presenting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
America is being financially broken and corrupted by the influx of people of limited means.. having more children than their jobs can support. This isn't even a dent in the fact that the number of people 100 percent dependent on government handouts have exceeded 51 percent of the population (commonly referred to as the tipping point).
For those of you bitching about a "pension" the race to market.. and the competitive field across hundreds of classifications.. have become victims to companies trying to keep their shareholders happy.. by finding creative ways to reduce the amount of expenditures for employee benefits. What used to be a career has now become a race for benefits. A career used to be an employee... hired by a company that if they did well.. stayed viable and kept contributing to the bottom line they could expect a retirement package. Now with the race to the bottom.. companies are fighting each other for the lowest wage, the lowest benefit package all to benefit the bottom line (and thus the share holders).
Blame the transition of the system from career to job. I myself listened to my parents and planned early for the eventual collapse of social security and the expected clamp-down and abolition of retirement and extended health benefits.. even though it meant my first few years at work were meager as far as expenditures for "fun".
Be safe.
As a Gen X'er I look at my parents generation and compare it to those who came before. My grandparents and great grandparents lived far less expensive lives than my parents.
My parents generation just consumed EVERYTHING in their paths. Cars, houses, financial stuff, etc. They set fire to their kids' and grandkids' futures to pay for their own present. And they are still doing it.
The fatter they get, both physically and figuratively the hungrier they get for more stuff. If they were gamblers it would be long last the time when they should be institutionalized for their problem. But they aren't. Thank God they will be dying out soon.
If we can get back to the standard of living my grandparents and great grandparents had, we might just be ok as a country.
Then the real money could be made by the people who run the banks. The boomers were there when it happened. We are here after the fact. Spin it however you want, the game is running out.
Whee!
That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about the Civil War to dispute it.
Na, just kidding.
South Carolina
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
Mississippi
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin
Louisiana
As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slave holding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery.
Alabama
Upon the principles then announced by Mr. Lincoln and his leading friends, we are bound to expect his administration to be conducted. Hence it is, that in high places, among the Republican party, the election of Mr. Lincoln is hailed, not simply as it change of Administration, but as the inauguration of new principles, and a new theory of Government, and even as the downfall of slavery. Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions—nothing less than an open declaration of war—for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and. her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized
You don't want a job flipping burgers do you! You HAVE to goto college!
So off you go to college. Rack up 20-40-60-80k debt.
Meanwhile the boomers outsourced all the jobs. Killed manufacturing jobs. Jacked up tuition.
Wages stopped rising. Productivity skyrocketed.
Automated everything they could to make their stock go up another %.
And here you are fresh out of school ready for a job!
Sorry. No jobs left.
Why don't you get a job flipping burgers you lazy fuck!
-
They are the perfect example of pulling the ladder up behind them.
Remember that the act claimed to have started the War Between the States was the firing by the guns at Ft. Sumpter on the US Navy blockading Charleston harbor.
Nope. The US Army troops from Charleston were at Fort Sumter, having withdrawn there for safety from land-based Fort Moultrie, but the forces of the Confederacy refused to let them be resupplied, seeking to starve them out, an act of war in itself, but eventually the separatists decided they would go to war, and initiated direct aggression.
Of course, the whole business with the Confederacy began with the forces of the South trying to manipulate the political and judicial system for their immoral practice of slavery and its distorting effects on their own economic development. There was a reason a state like Ohio produced more hay than the South. They actually invested in something other than the parasitic luxury crop of cotton.
Without slavery or its inherent amorality.
Not that the rest of the country was much better, but there is something wrong with owning people, deeply so. No matter how much your "culture" insists otherwise.
Of course, it was really just the oligarchs of the South who benefitted, but they had to con the masses of people somehow. So they vehemently played up bigotry, racism, and resentment of the North, and that model has been applied across the world in various forms.
Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Rwanda, Ireland, Brazil...make the downtrodden angry at the wrong target, then steal from them as they run off a cliff.
Linus isn't American born. How can he be or not be a boomer, which is an essentially American classification?
TOPKEK! Enjoy your corporate slavery!
Watch as this American Hubris allows China to invade or nuke Taiwan within the next 10 years. BOOK IT. ONE CHINA WINS.
This reminds me of a cartoon from the 60s with a caption of "your fault!" that shows some hippie pointing to his dad, who is pointing to the granddad, who is pointing to the great-granddad, who is pointing to eventually back to a monkey with a startled look on its face.
No, the baby boomers didn't create all the problems of the world.
Yeah! DEREGULATION has been nothing but SUNSHINE and LOLIPOPS for America since the 1970s.
Go fucking hang you 1% cocksucker.
Some of the things that drive me crazy, are the lack of fiscal responsibility and outright dishonesty over the last 60 some years in government.
;)
How anyone could think it it is OK to run up government debt, budget after budget with deficits, not properly funding the lavish pensions promised to public employees and now the outright corruption in the bureaucratic and political leadership in government. Just to name a few things.
Did the boomers run things well, the only answer can be no, not that well. Because the bill is going to be coming due soon. And most of the boomers that created the problems are going to be long gone or worst sitting pretty with their stash.
Just my 2 cents
People like to blame generations, but I think the overall loss of stability is to blame. I work in IT and am doing well, but I know that a CIO coming in and wanting to make his mark could send my job to Infosys or Tata and put me out on the street. You didn't have this in the baby boomer years...there were practically no layoffs and companies kept their workers for a full career. People could reasonably expect to work for maybe 2 or 3 employers their whole career, and now long tenure employment is very hard to find. Instead, you have people who uproot their families and move across the country at the drop of a hat. Some people do this every year or two.
Being nomadic means you never stay in one place for long and can't put down roots anywhere. This applies to physical location as well as workplace. In the IT field, it means that the majority of workers have absolutely no clue what the business they're working for actually does...I know consultants who take pride in that fact and are at a new employer every 6 months. Previous generations weren't so quick to jump from employer to employer. One of the reasons was that they had pensions, another thing that most newer workers will never see.
I think people who lived in better times were more content, not always looking over their shoulder to see who was going to offshore their job, happy to have a steady paycheck that allowed them to pay their bills, and a guaranteed retirement in contrast to the casino bet that is the 401(k) plan. I also think that the US had a much better mix of employment opportunities -- you could easily graduate from high school and have a high-paying factory job you could keep for life instead of being forced through college like we are now. I live in an area with high housing prices...nothing as crazy as California but still bad. A lot of this is due to those baby boomers desperately trying to cash out the only asset they have left for its maximum value because they lost their pensions and retirement accounts. This is one of the things that's going to make life bad for the younger crowd as we work through this slug of the population.
I blame academia, finance and the media.
No. But it sure seems like some whiney millennial types want to act like it.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
They give you an official generation card when you become an American citizen.
I mean, my fellow Americans.
and he's still at it.....
(for you guys who went to private religious school or to public school in a 'red' state.. here's a tip: yes, it's donald j. trump, country destroyer in chief)
'nuff said.
Although the U.S. remains the world's richest country, it has the third-highest poverty rate among the 35 nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
What the fuck did you think was going to happen when you imported tens of millions of illiterate poor people from the poorest countries on the planet? You thought the average wealth was going to go up, you idiots? You thought literacy would increase? What the fuck is wrong with you?
It was the political class. BOTH democrat & republicans...the "inside the beltway" types that screwed things up. To "the rich" that give to both political insider parties, they pass laws, make rules, have "insider" info for those in the club and the hell with everyone else.
No worries. Generation Zyklon will have them in the oven before you know it.
What happened is lot more clearly explained of the replacement of the WASP elites with Jews. Brill all but comes out and says it, with all the usual euphemisms.
And bitch about an easy target, "Baby Boomers."
You people are nothing but pussies!
Get a job!
reference
And Gen-X actually.
Who'da thunk? The same people who are trying to make you irate over your decidedly not-bad existence out of a sense of jealousy and envy. You feckless sheep. Suck it up and get back to work. Make tomorrow better than today.
The American civil war was NOT, as you were probably told, about slavery
Revisionist bullshit. The secession of the south was absolutely about slavery. It was about the south's desire to expand the slave territories, and it was about the clear danger presented by abolitionists in Congress.
I grew up in the total segregation pre-integration days in Georgia. The first time I attended a class with a negro in it was the 12th grade, and there were only 3 in a school of 1100 students.
Nobody back then spewed the shit that came out of your mouth. We knew it was about slavery, and that's what they taught us. Hardly anyone in the South that has half a brain believes what you said. I have no idea how Yankees got to be so stupid as to believe that shit. It's pretty fucking ignorant.
"Everybody knows the game is rigged" Leonard Cohen
Everything Steven Brill complained about here can be attributed to a neoliberal agenda. Think the 1% and their sycophants. While some are baby boomers, it would be wrong to say that all baby boomers are neoliberals and are therefore at fault. Most are too ignorant to even know what happened.
I could get into the weeds with this, but it would be at least as long at EditorDavid's post, and it would bore.
~
"Wealth, Mr Hobbes says, is Power" - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
How is Gates' charity supposed to last if they don't generate income?
Duuuuuuude, watch out - there's a Nazi hiding under your bed!
If any of you had even a modicum of honesty and intelligence you'd be talking about the fact that America imported 1.8 million third worlders last year. The baby boomers turned America from a 90% white country to a 60% white country. They doomed America to be a third world shithole.
How can you talk about job scarcity, transportation scarcity (traffic), and housing scarcity without talking about the fact that American has about 100 million people that don't belong here? Dishonesty. Denial.
Life is objectively, scientifically going downhill
Not true!
Just look at the hundreds of millions of people in China who are doing very well, now. The same applies to India and most of the rest of Asia. All you are seeing is equality taking place.
There are two ways to equalise a society. You can either raise everyone up to the level of the best, which is expensive, resource-intensive and broadly unsustainable. Or you can push everyone down to the level of the lowest. Both result in an "equal" society - one where the range from the lowest to the highest is reduced. (Excluding the ultra-rich, as they will never be subject to the pressures of "ordinary" people).
What globalisation has done is to make the flow of capital, knowledge and goods into a two-way street. Americans and some Europeans became wealthy (i.e. income above the global average) because they were better at the high-value, knowledge-driven stuff - leaving the commoditised, low value stuff to the RoW. It is pretty obvious to all who care to look, that this is no longer the case. China has the world's best supercomputers, many countries have space programmes, AI will blossom in the far-east as their governments aren't hobbled by funny western ideas of "privacy" and can make huge datasets of personal information available to their corporations. Transport costs are so low that goods can be made whereever it is cheapest.
The only thing that has declined is the west's ability to meet its level of entitlement.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
He's a complete moron. Don't waste your time.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Read Matthew Stewart's "The 9.9 Percent is the New American Aristocracy" in The Atlantic. Its premise is similar to what's describe in the summary, except that Stewart's article is based on sound reasoning and is well written.
The wealthy elite have always had their "thumb on the scales of democracy". That's no news. I don't think the Boomers were better or worse in that respect. When I think of Boomers, I think of my dad and his friends and colleagues -- developing and operating electronic banking systems, educating undergraduates, building or piloting airplanes. Driving trucks, delivering packages. It was all useful, productive stuff. I didn't know any lawyers or politicians growing up. The Boomers I knew helped build the America we live in: the good parts. I know there were bloodsuckers in that generation, but again -- no more than there ever were, no more than there are now.
Why do you assume that there should be anybody committing genocide at all?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
bc black people sure as shit didnt break this country's financial institutions multiple times wtf
If itâ(TM)s just a stupid comment, itâ(TM)s simply confusing ( yet again) correlation with causation.
If however, itâ(TM)s what a magician would call misdirection, we have to ask who gets to profit by the political debate turning into a mindless slanging match.
Our grandparents said that rock and roll would doom us all and they may have been right. America began to fall soon after. It was the sixties generation that despised and ridiculed the very principals and values this country was built on. Serving others was replaced by envy/greed/fairness. It used to be that ones survival depended on how well one could serve ones fellow man. We now have empowered the elite to make life fair and so now our survival depends on how well we can convince the elite that we are more deserving then our fellow man. Needless to say the concept of fairness is soon lost. Since societies effort is now wasted on fostering envy instead of building it, entropy takes over and society falls. It’s basic science.
Yes.
Somewhere along the way, some of the boomers got it in their head that while they garnered and enjoyed vast benefits and rights by living in this country, they didn't have to live up to the most basic responsibilities that this country asked of them. They turned and started siphoning off everything that every other generation had invested for them, ignoring the fact that there were more generations to come. We see the culmination of that in the self serving, greedy politicians they've elected who are doing everything they can to destroy what's left of the federal government, and this country, purely out of their own greed.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
I am enjoying this thread, because so many people have discussed insightful perspectives on the social and economic dynamics behind all of this. If nothing else, one can appreciate that the stresses on modern life bred by the Baby Boom generation are quite complex and multifactorial. As one of those Baby Boomers, here is another perspective on this topic that I have perceived as society has changed over these years. It suggests that some of the deficits of modern society are an unintended consequence of morally righteous movements in that era, activities meant to promote social equality and broader educational opportunities. Note - this is not an argument against education and equality, just an abstract observation of social and economic dynamics.
This thesis can be described as “workforce inflation with wage dilution”.
The post-war period circa 1945-1980 was, in the USA, an era of unprecedented optimism and middle class wealth. People could fulfill the American dream of home ownership, employment, and social security. Yes, there were negatives, like the Cold War and the A-bomb, Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Generation Gap, but the anxieties were balanced by the inspirations. There were gadgets galore, easy lifestyle, cultural robustness, and a sense of purpose and mission in projects like the Marshall Plan, the Peace Corps, the United Nations, Rock and Roll, Levittown and the suburbs, Route 66 and the open road, the Space Race, and so many others. This came on the heels of a well tooled industrial infrastructure, a highly skilled workforce (including Rosie the Riveter and the ladies), and a post war surge in college education. So, if you are living in the 50's or 60's, listening to Elvis Presley or Little Richard on your portable radio, watching the Smothers Brothers or the Apollo moon walks on a brand new color TV that you bought at a suburban shopping mall that you drove to in your Chevy or Olds, while the dishes and clothes are being washed automatically for you, life could hardly be imagined to be better.
That unprecedented social ease and economic robustness was the product of just half the population working. In that era, the women stayed home to "tend the hearth", while the men worked. With half the adult population at work, and half at home raising children with family values, then society, for the majority of people, was at a peak of "feeling good". Then came women's lib and educational and social equality, products of the Bay Boom era. Suddenly the workforce is diluted with twice the number of job seekers to do the same number of jobs that gave us unprecedented economic success. This is NOT a diatribe against women or equality. Translated to modern terms, that was the end of an era in which, in a society where committed domestic partnerships were the consistent norm, one partner was out of the house "bringing home the bacon", while the other partner raised the family, crucial to the perpetuation of primary education, values, and social norms for the next generation. So, at that time, we had extraordinary wealth, material largesse based on manufacturing prowess, and cultural optimism which required only half of the adult population to produce, while the other half of the adult population stayed at home to perpetuate respectable social values.
What happens though if the other half, the stay-at-home half, suddenly wants to and does enter the workplace? By spending less time at home, then social mores and family morals risk becoming diluted, corrupted, or forgotten. At the same time, the workforce is now doubled, twice the people working to make what was already a peak or epitome level of material production. The problem is that there is a certain fixed economic value in the existing material production. If a new TV is valued at $100, having two people instead of one to manufacture it does not change its relative value, and thus its retail price cannot vary too much. The company cannot charge $200 because people's wages have not gone up, so $200 is overpr
Baby boomers, where the ones that create most of what we have today. Yes there's a few of them very greedy, like gen X and Y, FB founder is one of them, Google and many others. Millennials seems too young to take part of it, but indeed we will have those very greedy Millennials too., if we already don't have it.
The problem is the system that is made just for help companies at the population costs. This happens due a few things that just happen in America, e.g.: Lobby that's known in other countries as bribe/corruption, because it enable large companies change the laws to be favorable to them, excess os patriotism because it makes citizens not question what's the president or elected people do and for last the lack of real information as most news in US just show the same topic over and over again till exhaustion then the population simple stop to care about it, news are also very biased (for the freedom country this is bad) and for last people that should not vote for those that didn't do good (yeah the Millennials seems to believe the system doesn't work and chose to ignore the democracy).
US is doing bad now due greedy, bad politicians and population that seems don't care to vote right because they want live in their tiny and 'perfect' world instead read and learn a little bit more.
When labor productivity increases faster than demand for goods and services, the demand for labor is going to drop. That's just basic arithmetic. To fix the resulting imbalance on the labor market, we need a shorter work week. The last time the work week was reduced, from 48 to 40 hours, is three generations ago. We're long overdue.
And we need more redistribution. Trickle-down is a myth, and the accumulation of wealth at the top is destroying our civilization.
I call it Capital Suction.
In a stable system without war capitalism will just about by design breed this problem. The body public has to have the broader picture in mind which they often don't. "I'll buy one last Mercedes 500 SEL before global warming laws prevent me from doing this."
In a system bent on valueing capital over work and sustainability, capital will always win out over labor. Until capital suddenly isn't worth squat anymore. That usually is noticed when it's too late. We see it happening already with negative interest for Banks and other fat cats in Europe and the US. ... Helicopter money would actually be the better solution. The problem is that helicopter money usually only comes in form of war were everting is bombed to pieces and only then society gets to start over on equal footing.
We all are pretty much aware of this effect, if only subconsciously.
The super rich have prepared for this, with hideouts spread around the world, enclaves with landing strips, their own wells and land enough to grow food. The smart cyberpunks (us) have adopteda cyberpunk lifestyle that enables us to move on a moment's notice. The regular guy however will be screwed once shit hits the fan again.
The alternative is a ever growing global post scarcity society run by some semi benevolent conglomerate of Google and Co. or something.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Blame, Blame, Blame. Lincoln quoted the Bible when he said 'A House divided against itself cannot stand'. I think he was referring to the elites who get people to fight amongst themselves instead of looking at them, like they are doing now.
Time to evolve people.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
These books are always interesting and full of thought-food. But they never go one step higher and ask, "Why is it so?" It is the development of hyper-liberalism in the 1960s which placed the wants of the individual above the wants and needs of the group, the neighborhood, the nation. President Kennedy must have seen this coming with his famous line: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." But hyper-liberalism is the inevitable result of democracy and its fatal flaw.
It is the propensity of the human mind to assume that if a little of a thing is good then an extreme amount of a thing is extremely good. But that is never the case, not even with something as fundamental to life as water. And the hyper-liberalism that allowed birth control and abortion of citizens for the convenience of the individual and the rise of a sociopathic feminism that encouraged women to shed their vital role as the producers of well-formed population for the nation in pursuit of a male positon in all aspects of life; that re-defined marriage as a mere social and legal convenience for the individuals involved; that created the "me-ism" of sex and drugs culture; that led to nice-feeling but continuously growing budget-busting social programs, is the natural path we should expect a maturing democracy to folllow, a path to its self-destruction.
Yes, it feels right to blame the "boomers." But they are the result of the development of hyper-liberalism, not the cause of its results.
E Proelio Veritas.
It happens everyware in the world.
In the old days it was about who controlled the money.
Not any more.
Now it’s about who controls the law.
It takes a combination of corrupt politicians and rich people networking together.
Thats the elite. They make and bend the rules as they see fit.
It’s a downwards spiral that brings chaos to the world order.
To make most happy the loan market is kept afloat so that people can stay in their houses.
That sounds right, if it wasn’t because the realestate market have kept getting more and more skewed since the late nineties.
And it just keep getting worse. Now some are getting money to loan money, while some can’t afford a place to live.
That really doesn’t have anything to do with equality?
The question is how long the equity marked can be artificially kept afloat and when the show must stop.
The whole derevity market is still full of bad loans, packaged up and hidden away.
It is still a ticking bomb.
Together with a cracling equity market, it might be time for a big change.
If the feds stop pouring money into the bond marked, there soon won’t be any money left for the semi criminal government lawyers that used to run the show.
And a lot of people will have a serious realestate downgrade in front of them.
When the government lawyers get kicked out, the political elite will have a hard time creating smart politics to help them selves as they have been used to in the past 20 to 30 years.
It will also make the public sector a lot cheaper and easy to work with.
And save a lot of tax payer money.
But can you imagine 10% to 20% being forced to leave or swap their homes? That wouldn’t be pretty.
Leftie: "Everyone should go to University! It''s Human Right!"
Normie: "Er, everyone can go to university. What's the problem?"
Leftie: "NOOO! Poor Brown people can't because Poor, Brown, Misogyny, Racism, Patriarchy, NAZIS!"
Normie: "Huh? We have bursary programs. Kids with good grades can fill out a form and get their education paid for. So what's the problem?"
Leftie: "REEEEEEEEEEEE! Everyone should go to University! It''s Human Right! REEEEEEEEEEEE!"
Normie: (sigh) "Ok, assuming you're right, how do you propose to pay for all that. University education is expensive."
Leftie: "Well tax the rich of course! Tax the evillll corporations!"
Normie: "Fuck Off"
Leftie thinks about this for a while rubbing 2 brain cells together then comes back.
Leftie: "I've got it! Why not a student loan program! We can setup yet another government bureaucracy to manage it! Big Government YAY!"
Rightie: "Hmmm, my banker friends would like that. They can profiteer from that. I think we need to ask University Administrators what they think of this."
Universities: "So what you're saying is we can take *everyone* in and we'll just get paid no matter what? HOLY SHIT THAT'S FANTASTIC!!!!"
Results:
Now Universites are all about asses-on-seats and not about higher learning.
It gets worse. Universities pressure professors and threaten their tenure if they fail too many students. Sorry Quantum Field Theory is hard...
It gets worse. Universities emphasize retardo courses like gender studies, intersectionality, postmodernism, Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc..
It gets worse. Kids get saddled with 50000 of debt and useless degrees living at home with mommy and daddy into their 30's.
It gets worse. Because courses get dumbed down Industry has trouble finding good candidates and therefore look outside. > 50% PHDs are H1B visas.
Solution: Kill the student loan programs. Whoops not so easy when the Banks, Government and University Administrations all support it. Good luck with that America. Good Job Lefties!
Simple as that. A generation of traitors and excuse makers.
Pretty much sums it up.
...and I don't mean we're all baby boomers, I mean that baby boomers are the same people with the same motivations that I see around me every day. The immediate gratification and status and symbol seeking culture.
Baby boomers just happened to be the generation where it started rolling downhill faster. The current generation in their late 30's and early 40's (as one example) is simply pushing that faster and faster as the gears of our economy and society work more and more loose.
Want someone to blame? There's someone you can - it's YOU.
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This all assumes that fallacy that America is "broken". America grew to become, and continues to grow to be, the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.
Military, economy, stability, invention, entrepreneurship, opportunity... That you have to work harder to do better seems like a rather logic conclusion, no? Yet, that concept seems lost on so many people.
If Sweden is panacea, then why do they come to America? Why don't the whiners pack off to the wonders of Euro-Nirvana?
Fuck Your False Premise, that America is broken.
The US economy was destined to be broken by the most siginficant event of the year 1913. That was the passage of the 16th Amendment enabling a US income tax.
50 years later, US President John F. Kennedy said, " "The largest single barrier to full employment of our manpower and resources and to a higher rate of economic growth is the unrealistically heavy drag of federal income taxes on private purchasing power, initiative and incentive.” John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963 "
Since then, it has only gotten worse. According to the proponents of a major competing financing mechanism, the Fair Tax, 22% of the price of any good manufactured in the USA is comprised of the cost of US income taxes. The US income taxes, not labor rates, are the real reason that manufacturing largely fled the USA. Don't believe it? Consider that, according to the auto companies who whined in 2008 when 2 out of 3 were going bankrupt that workers were costing $78 / hr in total compensation. Sound high? Consider that it takes 30 - 33 person-hours to build a car in the USA. Multiply that out to get about $2,500 labor cost. Then plug in the 22% cost of US income taxes to a $40K American-built SUV. That's $8,800. So, $2,500 in labor or $8,800 in tax expense. Which would be better to get rid of, enslaving the workers and paying them $0, or getting rid of the income taxes, which are simply legalized stealing of people's money by the gov't.
Looking at income taxes from an unconventional point of view, they are simple slavery. What did the old slave owners do to slaves? They stole the proceeds of the slave's labor for themselves. What does the gov't do? They steal the proceeds of the American people's labor for a portion of the year. We talk of tax freedom day, which this year is supposedly April 19. Last year it was April 23. A trend in the right direction, but woefully inadequate. The gov't is essentially the slave owner, we are the slaves, and the situation exists from January 1 to April 19 this year.
Tax freedom day should be January 1, the income taxes should be totally repealed, and I favor the FairTax to replace them. The FairTax is a consumption tax on new goods and services that occur above poverty level spending for each person's living situation. That is, if you're a family of 4 and the poverty level is $24,000, the gov't gives you enough money in a monthly check to pay the FairTax on $2,000 of spending per month. If you're single, and the poverty level is $12K, you get enough money from the gov't every month to pay the FairTax on $1000 of spending for that month.
Bill Archer, former head of the House Ways and Means committee, commissioned a survey to ask 500 foreign CEOs what they would do if the US passed the FairTax. 400 of them said that they would build their next factory in the USA. The other 100 said that they would move their company headquarters to the USA.
Sadly, we'll likely never get the FairTax passed because people have been successfully duped into believing that "corporate taxes" are paid by those mean old rich corporate executives who suffer mightily when they have to cough up those taxes out of their own pockets and thus diminish their playboy, high-living lifestyle to the delight of said unwashed, duped masses. The reality is that those mean old corporate executive simply raise the prices of the goods manufactured by the companies that they control, lower the wages of the workers in the companies that they control, and reduce dividends for the stocks the companies use for financing, all to take those monies saved to send the corporate taxes to the US gov't. Sadly, sometimes these price hikes, especially, make US products more expensive on the market than the foreign-made products built in countries with higher corporate income taxes (which was all other countries until earlier this year when Trump lowered the tax rates from 35%, where it had been since 1941, to 21%. Due to this reduction, the economy is "taking off." But it could be massively better if all the income taxes were lowered to $0.
How about this generation will inherit the world that their parents inherited? Along with its mythologies. That's where the problem is. And that's what is not changing.
Challenge your premises.
The fallout from the drug-addled selfish Sixties is that the same hippies who once renounced materialism got old and then did a complete U-turn.
This is the same stuff they told me when I was in elementary school. To me at all sounds like a bunch of BS with the less creative and lazy trying to blame previous generations for their issues.
things they told me that I found were either not true or had no barring on anything in reality.
1. if you don't go to college and get a degree, you'll spend your life working a min. wage job and poor.
2. kids these days don't have a chance of making as much as their parents
3. you won't be able to afford a house as big/nice as your parents.
4. pollution will engulf the earth causing a global ice age.
of what I've seen..
1. I have no college degree, though make more than many of my friends who did go to college. I've seen people go to college and become poor and wealthy just as I've seen people no get a degree and do the same. This has more to do with motivation, creativity, curiosity, and the drive to learn then anything else in my opinion.
2. for many of my friends. I would say, indexed for inflation, many make just as much or more than their parents.
3. same as 2....
4. the narrative has changed a bit on this one... but a lot has changed in a good way in many areas.
summed up, if all you do is look for handouts and someone to give you something, yes your future won't go well, but if you have creativity, ambition, and the desire to learn, all they tell you is a bunch of BS.
But it was in the way they raised (or rather didn't bother raising) millennials, not the crap in the piece. It really is that simple. 90% of our current societal ills go directly back to parents that didn't parent two generations of their kids who are now non-functional adults in body, mind, and heart. The rest is symptomatic and superfluous - if we continue this trend, things are only going to get worse, and NO ONE wants to talk about it.
The bulk of what you see above is actually a summary of a very excellent write up by Mr. Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic,
So much for your credibility.
Greed. Lawyers. Enough said.
It's you who needs a lesson. Reaganomics is what ruined America. He cut the top tier tax rate from 72% to 23% and raised taxes three times on the middle class, under the name of trickle down. He also cut corporate tax rates to the point where some companies like GE pay no taxes at all, and most of the big companies pay a smaller tax rate than teh average American does. The GOP has been repeating this pattern year after year, until the top 2% of Americans have over 50% of the wealth. The richest have seen their income increase 300% (not a typo) since Ronnie while the middle class, the engine that drives the country, has seen their income essentially stay flat, allowing for inflation. The economic records bear this out. To compound this, the middle class is now heavily in debt and paying more and more interest on borrowed money, just to stay afloat. Remember this fact: Back in the days of Eisenhower, before Ronnie gave the country away to the rich, the middle class could afford to live on a single income, own a new care, have a nice house and send their kids to college and still live comfortably. And this fact: When Clinton was in office, he raised taxes on the rich and left office with the first in decades budget surplus. When Bush came in, he promptly gave that surplus away to his rich friends, rescinded the tax breaks for the rich, and the country went back into debt again. So you want to blame somebody, blame the GOP. Want to fix it? Then return the tax rates to that of Eisenhower and the country will be out of debt in 12 years. There is no reason in the world why a person should be making more than a million per month, and expecting not to pay taxes on it. But don't be blaming the boomers or some economic theory, when reality and the plain stark facts explain it very clearly. The GOP, the party of the put America in the economic trouble it is in right now.
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Industry has trouble finding good candidates and therefore look outside. > 50% PHDs are H1B visas.
Your implication here is that there aren't any domestic PHDs or that domestic PHDs are scarce or less talented. But the truth of the matter is that there are so many PHDs that companies can set Masters degrees and PHDs as minimum requirements for junior and entry(!) level positions. Domestic PHDs have high debt and high salary expectations. Certainly higher expectations than "PHDs" from the "ITT University" of India and Pakistan. These masters and PHD mills provide HR with plenty of "qualified" candidates that are way cheaper that the domestic "ITT University" PHDs.
The reality is that it is just another barrier to entry that allows businesses to import cheaper offshore talent. That's why "> 50% PHDs are H1B visas". DOmestic PHDs are unwilling to work for that level of pay.
Steve Brill looks in the mirror and hates what he sees.
Those of us who didn't go to prep schools, ivy-league colleges, or become lawyers probably feel what he feels about people like him. But most people of his generation, even the high achievers, aren't like him.
Wow, What a naive and silly view of the world. Cry a river of stupidity.
Slavery was a component (it was a huge part of the Southern economy, after all), and it was certainly used as the official reason in the declarations. After all, it was in the Constitution, and gave them a legally valid reason to secede.
At heart, however, the issue was economic. Read about the tariffs, the different basis for the economies, and how disparate the impact was on the two regions.
Reading the Civil War as only and utterly about slavery is a very shallow reading. It does play into certain narratives that are useful for certain groups, so it's a popular reading. But, like most narratives, it's incomplete at best.
I am American and many of us are talking about how millennials are the real problem. And that is why we voted for Trump, to fix all the bullshit damage that dumbass millennials caused against this country by voting for corrupt morons like Obama and Clinton.
On the other hand, the idea of completely changing your surroundings isn't inherently bad. I did more or less as they describe, I was horribly depressed, moved to a third-world country, and had to survive on my wits. It's certainly a way to have different problems.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
with the installation of the federal reserve, and its been a downhill slope ever since, which accelerated more after ww2. But we can just blame a whole generation instead of realizing its the rich banker c**nts, like it always has been.
Face facts, civilizations become overly affluent, the upper class becomes corrupt, greedy and unrestrained. The corruption spreads to the middle-class. Eventually this corruption and greed overwhelms the productivity of the lower (slave) class. The inevitable result is the collapse of the old and decadent society and the rise of a new, less corrupt and more responsible one.
This is happening all around you, and btw, everyone's greed is advancing this natural process.
people suck and rich people suck the most
in this country the way to relative success remains to be working for government regulated industry the percentage of unionism is 85 % vs the 15% in the private sector
America was doomed in 1492. The Eurotrash started the greatest genocide in planetary history. Those people are INSANE! They will make the whole world uninhabitable.
This is just part of a natural cycle. Major social disruptions tend to reduce inequality: wars, revolutions, plagues, etc. In between, inequality increases steadily. The last major disruption to American society was WWII. At the end of the war, inequality was at historic lows. It's been going up ever since.
Maybe we'll find a way to break this cycle and reduce inequality without needing a war or plague to do it for us. But I wouldn't bet on it.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Lots of Baby Boomers opposed the policies that have wrecked America, but, unfortunately, there are enough economically illiterate people of all ages who vote Republican to ensure America was wrecked anyway. Sure, a small portion of the population is doing well and they own most stuff anyway. That's the problem right there.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Dammit, moderated...
I don't doubt the facts you presented, but I am not completely sure what they show.
Is this domestic oil production (as in oil pumped in the continental US) or oil production by US companies (as in oil pumped by companies registered in the US)?
The tone of your post suggests the former, and tbh I suspect as much, but I am not sure.
Do you know?
Sure, some boomers were involved or complicit, but there were a lot more of the "greatest" generation, who had a lot more power in the late 1970s-eary 1980s.
Most of the problems we see -- starting with inequality, can be documented as being a direct result of supply-side economics. The UK is in the same boat, due to Margaret Thatcher.
I hope that the Millennials learn the lesson we hippies did not -- that the struggle is endless.
Ronald Reagan was not a baby boomer.
No sig? Sigh...
im a boomer. i didnt do any of that shit. i didnt benefit from any of that shit. the story is "did sociopathic corporate criminals break america". the answer is yes.
The question Mr. Brill attempts to answer has plagued me for years. I was born in 1943, and for perhaps 20 years have been arguing that the US has gone way down "on our watch." I could site examples (compare the Eisenhower years to the Obama years), but couldn't identify the reasons. Perhaps Mr. Brill has found them.
Clearly when middle class people have no practical access to the court system (it's too expensive, and too slow), those who have access will bend the system to their interests.
I will buy his book today, but fear it may be limited to identifying the problem. I truly hope he also has solution(s) for the problem.
...none of those were boomers. The modern era of the Rape of America started with Powell and Nixon. By the late 60's the ship was sinking, and by now all that's left is the poop deck, and everyone's at the poop deck right now, and ankles are already wet.
We got fucked, plain and simple, and there's no fix for it other than to let it sink, and build a new one.
I'm so bitter and dismayed at what's happened to our nation in the past 50 years that I struggle to find words to express it without taking 3 pages.
Maybe an acronym or two will work: TARFU. FUBAR. And BOHICA, every election cycle BOHICA. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The rape of America is so thorough and well done that most people don't realize that every generation AFTER "the Greatest Generation" got robbed blind. Especially the boomer kids. Their parents robbed them blind, and X, and Millenials too.
The Greatest Generation did it. And we just rolled over and let ourselves be fucked.
Fuck it all. Burn it all. The only fix is revolution.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
If they had the evidence they could make the accusation.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Garbage, garbage, garbage
Somebody let the rabble in.
Brill's article is a brilliant game of self-deception and self-aggrandizement. If you read the original article, his thesis is basically that: after the war, universities started admitting students based on intellectual merit instead of their parent's social or financial situation. This led to a large supply of brilliant and educated people like Brill who gave corporations the mental horsepower to overpower the system.
Ahem. Sounds more like the storyline of the crack epidemic as told by the government, i.e. cheap, plentiful drugs overpower societal controls, aided and abetted by misguided, high-powered individuals. Brill is suggesting that universities graduated mainly high-class idiots until he and his generation came along. According to Brill, this movement was caused by powerful, well-meaning people who forgot that My Fair Lady is fiction, thought that they could mold smart boys into gentlemen. (Not trying to exclude girls & women here, but the white-male privilege thing was still going strong at the time.)
BUT, maybe Brill is on to something: his new generation of non-old-boys-club graduates were not only smart, but free from the old-boy social restrictions on behavior. These were people who were not bound by--and probably scorned--the rules of gentlemanly behavior. They didn't have to worry about being shunned by "society" when they pulled nakedly sharp moves with bad societal consequences. Or at least they didn't have to worry so much about what people would say if they got exposed.
I wasn't there, but I get the impression that there was an unwritten code of behavior among the powerful until Brill's generation came along. It was unwritten, but it was a powerful force that limited government & business action as surely as the constitution. That's gone now.
In its place, we now have "greed is good." Except in jest, stating that in public would have gotten you kicked out of any respectable gentlemen's club (no, not a strip joint -- an upper-class, male-only social club) 60 years ago. Yes, greed is an energy that has power, but it ends up consuming everything, much like anger is an energy but only in small doses. And greed has indeed consumed us.
The constitution and the government built upon it are no substitute for basic social norms. I'll bet that guys who wrote the constitution just assumed a certain social code (we do know these were religious men) as a backdrop to a constitutional republic, didn't even think that "men of good will" could rise to prominence without it.
Found the Trump voter.
but the milenials surely will
The conservative head of the department of history from West Point utterly and absolutely disagrees with you. He decomposes your bullshit argument about "economics" piece by piece.
"It does play into certain narratives that are useful for certain groups", true only if by "certain groups" you mean the dumbass losers who want to continue to put up participation trophy statues to failed traitors across the country.
This has been one of the more educational threads i've read on here. Can we do more like this please...?
I don't like reading about people who have recovered from booze, drugs, gambling, or being elite Baby Boomers. Spare me the Good Catholic or the whatever moment.
and statements of absolute unimpeachable Truth.
Little listening or acknowledgment that any other point of view might hold the slightest validity or be a reason to consider any modification to the speaker's immutably held and stated position.
the Ultimate Truth is: I am Absolutely Right; anyone who disagrees in any manner is just
wrong.
apropos CAPCHA; 'severely'
Let us pretend that Hitler/Hirohito never were.
The industrial capacity of the US would be second world country status.
When WW2 ended, the US had 50% of world production (because most production had been destroyed).
Now it has about 23% and it will continue to decline mainly because of our social safety net (Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security).
If it can be made cheaper wherever, then that's where it'll be made.
Over the next 20 years or less, several trillions of dollars will be shifted (willed over) to the next generation. Then we can blame them.
I just farted. It was great.
You may not be in love with her party but it is a good interpretation of the data:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The middle class is one injury, debt, accident away from being homeless...
short answer: YES
long answer: NO
Millennials are the generation of "I'm a victim", "it's somebody else's fault", "it's unfair that anyone has more than me" and "the government should give me more free stuff".
As it has always been... even when the publus lacks a vote, their favor is curried by those in power.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Why did (more like are) Baby Boomers Break America? Because there are so many of them. That big slug of kids came along about when medical advancements made sure most survived to retirement age, and now they're sucking up the economy. But they had help. Their parents, of course, who celebrated the end of WW2 by having a bunch of babies, and who likewise were beneficiaries of scientific advances and lived to a ripe old age (older than many Boomers can expect, really). Most of the extra wars and such came from a political system dominated by the Boomers' parents up until at least the 1980s if not early '90s. In many ways, they're still dominating it, though in diminishing numbers; the Boomers are taking over as the olde fartz barking from the porch (except the porch is now Facebook, Twitter, 4chan, etc.). Unfortunately, as noted above, some late Boomers and their parents got together and entrenched Pure Greed as the primary function of government and business, something that we're still trying to deal with (even as Boomers); THAT is what Broke America, though it took several decades to do it.
Close, but you left out the ethnic component. A closer look shows us that the new generation of non-old-boys-club graduates were largely Jewish (as is Brill himself), whereas the adherents of the unwritten code of behavior were WASPs. I realize we aren't supposed to notice such things, but it's significant factor. Note who's largely in control of the institutions he indicts: the universities, finance and law.
Yeah, it was boomers, but a very specific subset of boomers.
... one in eight Americans might visit the 1 percent for a year, only one in a hundred stay there for a decade or more. - https://bit.ly/2GY7EV8
The War on Drugs was started by Republicans as a reaction to the Civil Rights Movement.
To suppress non-whites.
The War on Poverty started when the War on Drugs was an obvious failure.
To suppress non-whites.
Almost eveything the Boomers have done is racist, design to destroy the country, so long as it does more damage to non-whites than whites.
Learn to love Alaska
Fuck yeah.
I don't give a rip if your yokel ancestors were racist Southerners who literally committed TREASON over the issue or they were so mentally retarded by inbreeding they fell for the related tribal propaganda.
The fact is, the whole economy was based around slave labor and nobody there wanted to change their ways. People have to stop this BS to make themselves feel better because they are descended from racist TRAITORS -- deal with it! You have nothing to do with your ancestors (unless they were dumb as fuck... nah, I'm kidding, science doesn't show anything other than genetic disorders passing down not IQ.)
We need to hammer apologists until they accept reality; just like nazi/holocaust deniers. It's really the same irrational behavior that creates these atrocities:
People who can't accept the truth and handle it rationally invent all sorts of excuses to avoid it. It builds up and can create a framework whereby culture, beliefs, mythology, and the warping of religions all support a collective delusion. The South did this to justify their GREED and made it part of their whole way of life so their economy could continue.
Revisionism doesn't just apply to history, it creates it too.
BTW, it's not leaders lying into war-- this is a whole grass roots movement with many people involved all rallying around slavery as their central issue! To the point they started a WAR over it; not simply by just voting (and losing.) If the conspiracy to make the war was the real cause... the propaganda which got the southern masses motivated WAS SLAVERY (and associated tribalism in which they ALL contributed.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Let's see... find people to blame. Better that they are not young people, because we need their energy and lack of wisdom. Better make them weak, unpopular, and unimportant. Make every one angry at the scapegoats so they won't think about the government as culprit. Then, make sure that the government is portrayed as the only solution. Then institute austerity measures ... increasing the blame on the scapegoats. Oh wait... this is only history of course.