Slashdot Mirror
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?
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!