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Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

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Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#241

Post by jm__87 »

wonderwonder wrote: post #21

A four year degree is no longer an advantage but rather a base which allows you to have even a hope of competing. Not having a degree is of course a disadvantage. As automation and outsourcing continues, the issue will only worsen. On top of that we are constantly bombarded with images of the life we should be living via advertising and television. Not meeting these media driven standards leads to further depression…

> On top of that we are constantly bombarded with images of the life we should be living via advertising and television. Not meeting these media driven standards leads to further depression and despair.

Not meeting these standards does not automatically lead to depression and despair. You have to think that these things are things you should be attaining to actually feel bad about not having them. This is more of a personal development problem, not a media problem.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#242

Post by ryandrake »

nostrademons wrote: post #87
posguy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the power of capital over labor, whereby capital is extremely stratified in the hands of very few people, and they have shifted political power so as to avoid investment in the laborers (aka everyone below themselves) and ensure they do not become a threat. Additionally, they will usually influence monetary policy to ensure their status is never challenged, which is why rapidly rising housing prices aren't a majo…

Interestingly, capital holders are complaining all the time as well. There are very few places to put money now with a decent return. Savings accounts pay roughly 0%. Bonds are at inflation, or sometimes less. The S&P 500's P/E is at 25, which is historically very high, implies a rate of return of about 4%, and makes the risk of a correction significant. Real estate is inefficient; property prices are so high that th…

The "capital holders" are crying crocodile tears. Oh my god, my millions are only making a 4% return! The horror! My heart bleeds for those downtrodden folks, really it does. Tons of people make 0% return because they live paycheck to paycheck, are deep in debt, and have no savings and no investments. Almost half of Americans own no stock (either directly or indirectly through retirement funds, etc.) [1] and therefore do not even have the opportunity to bitch about "rates of return" at all.

The capital class (as opposed to workers) has captured [2] nearly all of the business value created since the 70s through productivity improvements. Automation will multiply this disparity. Recent "post-recovery" income gains have almost gone entirely to the top [3].

I really don't think anyone should be expected to give a shit about what capital holders think. Maybe things would actually improve if they could be made to stop "holding" so much.

1: http://www.gallup.com/poll/182816/little-change-percentage-a...

2: http://www.epi.org/publication/understanding-the-historic-di...

3: https://thinkprogress.org/the-1-percent-have-gotten-all-the-...

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#243

Post by chrshawkes »

anigbrowl wrote: post #118
rfc wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. 1,000x. Some of the most successful folks I know went into trade, became "masters of their domains", and then bridge their skills with business to create their own businesses. As an example: A friend from back home got into boring right out of high school. 20 years later, he runs one of the most successful directional boring companies in the region and is a multi-multi millionaire. He was told in high school th…

No offense, but isn't this just anecdata? I don't deny that people can do extremely well taking non-traditional paths, they certainly can. But pointing out the existence of exceptions isn't a substantive response to the observations about the larger trend. You can always find exceptions to any trend but generalizing from them is fallacious, as any casino owner will be glad to confirm.

I personally make close to 150k per year as a developer and a YouTube personality. I didn't go to college.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#244

Post by tomjen3 »

irrational wrote: post #6

I worry about this for my oldest son. He has dyspraxia and apraxia. In practice that means he has difficulty with memory (at 15 he still doesn't know his multiplication tables) and putting things in order (such as speaking - you have to put phonemes, words, sentences together in order to speak). But, he doesn't look like he has a disability and he doesn't speak much so people don't readily realize he doesn't talk lik…

Does it have to be near you? Farmers in America have severe trouble hiring people - I can't find the article now, but they were basically offering 60k/year to drive a tractor, no experience needed. Not SV money, but the cost of living is also much lower and no college debt.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#245

Post by prodmerc »

breatheoften wrote: post #110
thesagan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Within capitalism itself, some economists also argue that wealth concentration tends to suppress investment opportunities, because there aren't as many "moneyed eyes" on economic events worthy of capital and management; investment gets tunnel vision. I don't have any links on-hand but there's plenty of material out there (from reputable sources, and not-so-reputable ones) with a quick Google search. https://www.googl…

It seems like capitalism really needs something like a wealth tax -- ideally with the rate tied to the change in concentration of wealth over the whole society, so during periods of time when capital is concentrating, the wealth tax goes up vs epochs when it does not... Interestingly, I was reading about the idea of a wealth tax and came across this depressing nugget ...: > In 1999, Donald Trump proposed for the Unit…

Is that accurate? 15% could generate that much? That's mind boggling, I always assumed it would take a 50%+ tax on multimillionaires/billionaires...

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#246

Post by Jtsummers »

sbierwagen wrote: post #227
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to imagine a violent uprising in a state with such militarized police and widespread, distributed armed forces presence as the US. When even outside of times of unrest, encounters with the police result in getting fatally shot or seriously injured much more frequently than in comparably high-HDI states [1][2], it would take the cooperation of police and the military to allow unrest to take its course i…

In 2008, state and local law enforcement agencies employed more than 1.1 million people on a full-time basis, including about 765,000 sworn personnel (defined as those with general arrest powers). So, 1 in 416 people in the US is a sworn law enforcement official. Not great odds for fighting armed revolt.

An armed revolt wouldn't just be going up against law enforcement. At that level of violence, they'd be going up against the National Guard (state militias), the US military (both active duty and reserve). Of course, across all three groups fighting against the revolters there will be both sympathizers and revolters themselves (I'd particularly expect to see this amongst local and state law enforcement and militias, less amongst federal military and law enforcement but still present).

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#247

Post by stinkytaco »

CPLX wrote: post #171
stinkytaco wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about working conditions. I'm referring to employment. We need less people to do stuff. Thousands of years ago everyone was involved in subsistance. Pretty soon we developed technologies (the wheel, the plow) that meant we needed fewer people to do that. So people were able to move on to doing other things (like making pots or clothing). Pretty soon we automated those things as well (potters wheel, th…

> We need less people to do stuff. A thousand years ago there were 400 million people on earth. Today there are 764 million jobs in China alone. So, on a literal basis at least, that's not turning out to be true so far. Your supposition is that this time it's different than all the other times people have claimed that automation and technology will make everyone idle. But maybe it's not different this time. Maybe tec…

My supposition isn't that it's different. Just faster. There is no "this time", it's been an ongoing process. We have been able to produce more with fewer people since the plow was invented. As the pace of technological improvement increases, the amount we can produce does as well. For a long time we just produced more and different stuff, but that's not going to last forever. I do not think this is bad necessarily, just something we now have to acknowledge and plan for. We need to start seriously considering how we structure a society where not everyone can -- or needs to -- work.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#248

Post by nostrademons »

ryandrake wrote: post #242
nostrademons wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, capital holders are complaining all the time as well. There are very few places to put money now with a decent return. Savings accounts pay roughly 0%. Bonds are at inflation, or sometimes less. The S&P 500's P/E is at 25, which is historically very high, implies a rate of return of about 4%, and makes the risk of a correction significant. Real estate is inefficient; property prices are so high that th…

The "capital holders" are crying crocodile tears. Oh my god, my millions are only making a 4% return! The horror! My heart bleeds for those downtrodden folks, really it does. Tons of people make 0% return because they live paycheck to paycheck, are deep in debt, and have no savings and no investments. Almost half of Americans own no stock (either directly or indirectly through retirement funds, etc.) [1] and therefor…

If you substitute "retired parents" for "capital holders" and "$40K income" for "4% returns", would it change the tone of your comment?

The problem with class-warfare explanations is that class distinctions are a lot more muddled than simple labels, and many people are both labor and capital at the same time. Or if not, one member of a family might easily be working class while another family member relies upon savings to live.

(I do think there's something inexcusable about the layers of hedge funds & management fees between a retiree's pension and the actual capital markets; it's like the entire financial industry decided that pensioners are the rubes to fleece.)

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#249

Post by humanrebar »

fasquoika wrote: post #223
temp-dude-87844 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to imagine a violent uprising in a state with such militarized police and widespread, distributed armed forces presence as the US. When even outside of times of unrest, encounters with the police result in getting fatally shot or seriously injured much more frequently than in comparably high-HDI states [1][2], it would take the cooperation of police and the military to allow unrest to take its course i…

>encounters with the police result in getting fatally shot or seriously injured Which absolutely enrages a large portion of the populace. The state can't just put down protests with violence and expect things to get better. Ruling through fear never works for long. History is littered with revolts that only became popular after everyone involved were slaughtered and normal people became sympathetic

> Ruling through fear never works for long.

Define 'long'. North Korea has been a mess for a while.

Re: Young White America Is Haunted by a Crisis of Despair

#250

Post by Arizhel »

curveship wrote: post #217
will_brown wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And I find it at least questionable that parenting has gotten markedly less supportive in the past few decades. Look at the trends of the past few decades: divorce; single parent; and dual income households. There is in fact remarkedly less two parent, supported by single income households, meaning it's a rareity for a child to simply have a parent at home when they return from school to fix them a healthy snack, as…

US divorce rate is lower than it's been for 40 years.

The marriage rate has also fallen greatly. People aren't getting married as much, and more and more people are just staying single.
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