Future jobs won’t support decent living standard

[ooiron manoo]

It's nice to puff our chest as a country to "protect" the country from the outside.

It's crumbling from the inside, how will those in the military feel when the day comes in which our "defense" is deployed against it's own people?

 

[Gill Baka Esq. LLC.]

How about instead of us eliminating debt...we eliminate money?

probably made all these economic/financial types spit out their coffee by saying such blasphemy but the way I see instead of worrying about how much our dollar is worth compared to other nations we should look at how much value we make a single piece of paper worth.

This is truly wishful thinking and I know it may not even happen in our lifetimes but if you wanna eliminate all these problems you eliminate the source.

I feel like zeitgeist was partially right.

 

[Gill Baka Esq. LLC.]

How about instead of us eliminating debt...we eliminate money?

probably made all these economic/financial types spit out their coffee by saying such blasphemy but the way I see instead of worrying about how much our dollar is worth compared to other nations we should look at how much value we make a single piece of paper worth.

This is truly wishful thinking and I know it may not even happen in our lifetimes but if you wanna eliminate all these problems you eliminate the source.

I feel like zeitgeist was partially right.

 

[ricky409]

Give every Lamborghinis and gold chains and we good...


Lol @ the wall of text.

Lol @ the homey in red "so what you saying, dawg.... "

#ntswag

 

[ricky409]

Give every Lamborghinis and gold chains and we good...


Lol @ the wall of text.

Lol @ the homey in red "so what you saying, dawg.... "

#ntswag

 

[airbornho]

Originally Posted by GrimlocK

How about instead of us eliminating debt...we eliminate money?

 

[airbornho]

Originally Posted by GrimlocK

How about instead of us eliminating debt...we eliminate money?

 

[rexanglorum]

cguy610 wrote:

---

Originally Posted by Rexanglorum

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.


Let the mathematical distribution of income be anything as long as the bottom fifth and the median and/or mean are moving up in terms of standards of living.

More middle class people are becoming poor and the country is turning into a whole lot of poor people and a few rich people.


The bottom fifth and the median/mean have been moving down over the past 20 years. 

Our country is on a path to becoming a third world country in which there are a few rich people and everyone else is poor.  I guess you see no problem with that yet. 




Let me address your points in reverse, from the last up to the first. (also for the sake of some brevity, when I compare prices over time, assume that they are adjusted for inflation)

Again, if the distribution is not a perfect bell curve, I am okay with that. Bimodal, Trimodal, left skewed, rightward skewed, it really does not matter. What matters is the reality on the ground and while this recession has diminished the standard of living for many people, life in 2011 for someone who is in the 10th percentile or the 90th percentile is better in 2011 than it was in 1991 or 1981 and certainly 1801 or 1941 or any date that you can come up with from that mythical mid 20th century, which is always cited as a time of plenty. Cars that rarely got over 100k miles, 3 TV channels, most household without airconditioning or dishwashers, double digit interest rates, double digit inflation, virtually no effective medicine for heart disease, two bedroom homes for whole families, crappy and americanized Italian and Chinese restuarants were considered exotic treats in even the most posh and chic neighborhoods, welcome to that lost Golden Age of the Middle class, that utopian period from 1945 to 1981 that is always cited as time when we "made things" and the Middle Class had savings.

It was true that the Middle class had savings, which only shows the sheer lack of thrift possed by most Americans, in 1961 the average American household's inflation adjusted income was a third of what it is today (also keep in mind that most households were headed by two parents and today many housholds are headed by a single or divorced mother). Keep in mind that in the mid 20th Century, more and more women joined the work force and joined the professions so that glorious bellcurve of houshold income began to split when you have a proliferation of both households, headed by a single mother due to many divorces as well as households headed by two working and professional adults. It seems like the most effective way to regain that wonderful 1950's bellcurve is to return to 1950's social mores regarding women. Force more women to live in abusive relationships and keep them out of the professions and we can buttress the middle class, as it is defined in an abstract and mathematical way by so many pundits and politcians.

I have no problem with mathamtical abstractions that upset you, I do have a problem with actual poverty and by objective measures of wealth, the bottom fifth of the country is wealther than the bottom fifth was in 1981 or 1951, more cars, housing, televisions sets, computers, washing machines, dishwashers define the existance of the working poor in our time than it did a half century ago.

Obviously the working poor face many challenges, usually created by misguided government attempts to save either them or, far more often, they are sacraficed at the altar of some other leftwing cause. In California, environmentalists have severely restricted building new homes so rent or mortgages are more expensive than in the past. In poor urban school districts, where teacher unions are the most powerful, the public school behave like any entrenched monopoly, they deliver very little and usually at a very high cost, yet the political left opposes vouchers and school choice and other programs that would give poor children a better k-12 education. Poorer people tend to pay very regressive taxes at the local level, sales taxes and sin taxes on liquor and cigarettes take a bigger bit from smaller incomes. What do they get from that regressive taxation, they get very little. In Los Angeles the public streets in Brentwood and Bel-Air get paved, in poorer places, with more students and illegal aliens, the city lets the potholes get deeper and make the neighborhood more and more blighted. Eventually, they seize your modest house or apartment in order to make room for a wealthy and politically connected developer who needs to you relocate to the Deserts of Palmdale or Victorville so he can build a new Shopping Mall or upscale condo complex.

The private sector, which is what creates wealth has churned out its end of the bargain, even the poor of today are better off than the poor of yeasteryear. The public sector seems to be inflicting most of the pain and damage to the working poor, that bottom fifth of the population. I believe that as long the political left is kept in check, the average poor person in 2041 will be richer, in absolute material terms than the median income earner today. So if we have population were 90 of the population is poor, in a mathematical sense that they make much less than the mean but they have the equavalent purchasing power as someone who makes 70K today, I would rather be "poor" in the fture than middle class in the present. I would rather have 20k more in purchasing power per year than make due with 50K (the 2011 median household income) and the knowledge that I get to sit in the middle of a bellcurve, a mathematical abstraction that pleases the chattering classes.


Finally, I would like to see some evidence that over the lat two decades or more, the median income household and household in the bottom 10th percentile own less goods and have less purchasing power. I would like to see evidence of that that goes beyond rhetoric and mathematical abstractions.

 

[rexanglorum]

cguy610 wrote:

---

Originally Posted by Rexanglorum

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.


Let the mathematical distribution of income be anything as long as the bottom fifth and the median and/or mean are moving up in terms of standards of living.

More middle class people are becoming poor and the country is turning into a whole lot of poor people and a few rich people.


The bottom fifth and the median/mean have been moving down over the past 20 years. 

Our country is on a path to becoming a third world country in which there are a few rich people and everyone else is poor.  I guess you see no problem with that yet. 




Let me address your points in reverse, from the last up to the first. (also for the sake of some brevity, when I compare prices over time, assume that they are adjusted for inflation)

Again, if the distribution is not a perfect bell curve, I am okay with that. Bimodal, Trimodal, left skewed, rightward skewed, it really does not matter. What matters is the reality on the ground and while this recession has diminished the standard of living for many people, life in 2011 for someone who is in the 10th percentile or the 90th percentile is better in 2011 than it was in 1991 or 1981 and certainly 1801 or 1941 or any date that you can come up with from that mythical mid 20th century, which is always cited as a time of plenty. Cars that rarely got over 100k miles, 3 TV channels, most household without airconditioning or dishwashers, double digit interest rates, double digit inflation, virtually no effective medicine for heart disease, two bedroom homes for whole families, crappy and americanized Italian and Chinese restuarants were considered exotic treats in even the most posh and chic neighborhoods, welcome to that lost Golden Age of the Middle class, that utopian period from 1945 to 1981 that is always cited as time when we "made things" and the Middle Class had savings.

It was true that the Middle class had savings, which only shows the sheer lack of thrift possed by most Americans, in 1961 the average American household's inflation adjusted income was a third of what it is today (also keep in mind that most households were headed by two parents and today many housholds are headed by a single or divorced mother). Keep in mind that in the mid 20th Century, more and more women joined the work force and joined the professions so that glorious bellcurve of houshold income began to split when you have a proliferation of both households, headed by a single mother due to many divorces as well as households headed by two working and professional adults. It seems like the most effective way to regain that wonderful 1950's bellcurve is to return to 1950's social mores regarding women. Force more women to live in abusive relationships and keep them out of the professions and we can buttress the middle class, as it is defined in an abstract and mathematical way by so many pundits and politcians.

I have no problem with mathamtical abstractions that upset you, I do have a problem with actual poverty and by objective measures of wealth, the bottom fifth of the country is wealther than the bottom fifth was in 1981 or 1951, more cars, housing, televisions sets, computers, washing machines, dishwashers define the existance of the working poor in our time than it did a half century ago.

Obviously the working poor face many challenges, usually created by misguided government attempts to save either them or, far more often, they are sacraficed at the altar of some other leftwing cause. In California, environmentalists have severely restricted building new homes so rent or mortgages are more expensive than in the past. In poor urban school districts, where teacher unions are the most powerful, the public school behave like any entrenched monopoly, they deliver very little and usually at a very high cost, yet the political left opposes vouchers and school choice and other programs that would give poor children a better k-12 education. Poorer people tend to pay very regressive taxes at the local level, sales taxes and sin taxes on liquor and cigarettes take a bigger bit from smaller incomes. What do they get from that regressive taxation, they get very little. In Los Angeles the public streets in Brentwood and Bel-Air get paved, in poorer places, with more students and illegal aliens, the city lets the potholes get deeper and make the neighborhood more and more blighted. Eventually, they seize your modest house or apartment in order to make room for a wealthy and politically connected developer who needs to you relocate to the Deserts of Palmdale or Victorville so he can build a new Shopping Mall or upscale condo complex.

The private sector, which is what creates wealth has churned out its end of the bargain, even the poor of today are better off than the poor of yeasteryear. The public sector seems to be inflicting most of the pain and damage to the working poor, that bottom fifth of the population. I believe that as long the political left is kept in check, the average poor person in 2041 will be richer, in absolute material terms than the median income earner today. So if we have population were 90 of the population is poor, in a mathematical sense that they make much less than the mean but they have the equavalent purchasing power as someone who makes 70K today, I would rather be "poor" in the fture than middle class in the present. I would rather have 20k more in purchasing power per year than make due with 50K (the 2011 median household income) and the knowledge that I get to sit in the middle of a bellcurve, a mathematical abstraction that pleases the chattering classes.


Finally, I would like to see some evidence that over the lat two decades or more, the median income household and household in the bottom 10th percentile own less goods and have less purchasing power. I would like to see evidence of that that goes beyond rhetoric and mathematical abstractions.

 

[finnns2003]

Yes, cutting education certainly doesn't help. Countries like China and South Korea are destroying the U.S. in terms of education. And coincidentally, those countries are leading economies.

 

[finnns2003]

Yes, cutting education certainly doesn't help. Countries like China and South Korea are destroying the U.S. in terms of education. And coincidentally, those countries are leading economies.

 

[alchemiss]

We're talking minimum wage here... I'm sorry but if you're a parent and can't get a job better than minimum wage, you're doing it wrong. My mom was a single mother with 4 kids.. working full time as a bartender and going to school (paid for all herself, no help from anyone). There's absolutely NO excuses.

 

[alchemiss]

We're talking minimum wage here... I'm sorry but if you're a parent and can't get a job better than minimum wage, you're doing it wrong. My mom was a single mother with 4 kids.. working full time as a bartender and going to school (paid for all herself, no help from anyone). There's absolutely NO excuses.

 

[moneymike88]

Originally Posted by rashi

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.

There really isn't. It's a politically convenient term that applies to a wide audience. "Rich", "Poor", "Middle Class", "Fair", ect. are terms used by politicians when they want people to pay attention.


See, it's hard for us Austrians to come to grips with the means of Statists because our ideology doesn't have a Class System. We don't group people and put them into categories, we don't see a race, we see potential and what each individual can do with it.





I understand now

 

[moneymike88]

Originally Posted by rashi

I will never understand the mathematical obsession with a middle class, as if there must be a bell curve for incomes.

There really isn't. It's a politically convenient term that applies to a wide audience. "Rich", "Poor", "Middle Class", "Fair", ect. are terms used by politicians when they want people to pay attention.


See, it's hard for us Austrians to come to grips with the means of Statists because our ideology doesn't have a Class System. We don't group people and put them into categories, we don't see a race, we see potential and what each individual can do with it.





I understand now

 

[elcatfisho]

Originally Posted by DJprestige21


SO WHAT YOU SAYIN DAWG.

I think you're 5-0

 

[elcatfisho]

Originally Posted by DJprestige21


SO WHAT YOU SAYIN DAWG.

I think you're 5-0

 

[moneymike88]

Originally Posted by Alchemiss

We're talking minimum wage here... I'm sorry but if you're a parent and can't get a job better than minimum wage, you're doing it wrong. My mom was a single mother with 4 kids.. working full time as a bartender and going to school (paid for all herself, no help from anyone). There's absolutely NO excuses.

Uh, what about the availability of jobs that pay above minimum wage...

 

[moneymike88]

Originally Posted by Alchemiss

We're talking minimum wage here... I'm sorry but if you're a parent and can't get a job better than minimum wage, you're doing it wrong. My mom was a single mother with 4 kids.. working full time as a bartender and going to school (paid for all herself, no help from anyone). There's absolutely NO excuses.

Uh, what about the availability of jobs that pay above minimum wage...

 

[purehoopa1]

Originally Posted by ItsJaloppyDummy

Time to leave the U.S.?

This

 

[purehoopa1]

Originally Posted by ItsJaloppyDummy

Time to leave the U.S.?

This

 

[nyota de la star]

Those darn Baby Boomers.

 

[nyota de la star]

Those darn Baby Boomers.

 

[DonRafa]

Originally Posted by ooIRON MANoo

It's nice to puff our chest as a country to "protect" the country from the outside.

It's crumbling from the inside, how will those in the military feel when the day comes in which our "defense" is deployed against it's own people?

This is something I think about, and whether we like it not that day is coming.

 

[DonRafa]

Originally Posted by ooIRON MANoo

It's nice to puff our chest as a country to "protect" the country from the outside.

It's crumbling from the inside, how will those in the military feel when the day comes in which our "defense" is deployed against it's own people?

This is something I think about, and whether we like it not that day is coming.