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Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

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Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#121

Post by wayoutthere »

bluedino wrote: post #99
wayoutthere wrote: post #8

In the US, it's less active protest and more things like slacking off heavily at work because it's a treadmill we can't win. We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. We as a nation have basically told people "no, you can't have a comfortable life or save for retirement because your parents' generation still needs to get 10% annual growth to make their retirement mat…

>> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. Pride? Character? Respect from colleagues?

At some point, those words start to take on a different meaning. "Pride" is something selfish that gets you in trouble, "character" is just what someone tells you when they need something for free, and respect of others is gained by being a good human being rather than a hard worker.

Sometime in your mid-30s you stop caring what "everyone else" thinks and work to build a life that makes you happy. For many of us, it's going through the motions at work and spending our real energy on friends and family. I actually feel bad for my colleagues who put in maximum effort and stay late every day.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#122

Post by devsag »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #60
nohope wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Almost nobody wants to overthrow capitalism. People want to make adjustments to the current form of it to address concerns. You are right, and that is exactly the problem, since it is something history proved impossible to be reformed. EDIT: reforming capitalism is a long term desire from part of the humankind. It is not a new idea and has yield very long discussions [1]. So, the big idea today is indeed how to ove…

We abandoned Bretton Woods and triggered the hugely inflationary seventies - the 73 oil crisis helped a lot here too. We've had, and still have, the Nordic model. Capitalism is dramatically different today than it was in the 1960s in most countries. We've had the monetarism/neoliberal experiment for 40 years. We've had globalisation to completely disconnect capitalism (and capital) from government, country and employ…

The only difference is there was no labor capital at that period. The risk of capital has been transferred to labor from capitalists. The real change in government happened through Reagan who legalized big corps and started the age of M&A. Globalisation also did help in economy but countries like China which have closed markets but access to open markets lead to more marginalization of labor.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#123

Post by taco_emoji »

bluedino wrote: post #99
wayoutthere wrote: post #8

In the US, it's less active protest and more things like slacking off heavily at work because it's a treadmill we can't win. We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. We as a nation have basically told people "no, you can't have a comfortable life or save for retirement because your parents' generation still needs to get 10% annual growth to make their retirement mat…

>> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. Pride? Character? Respect from colleagues?

These things only matter once basic monetary needs are met.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#124

Post by isoskeles »

jahaja wrote: post #67
isoskeles wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t want Stalinism, but you do want to limit the speech of people who disagree with what you want? Or you just wish and fantasize for it?

What? How did you even manage to reach such a pathetic conclusion?

I asked. I'm open to the possibility that you were just making a snide comment about how you don't want to hear from these people at all. What kinds of comments would you expect in return?

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#125

Post by bcrosby95 »

bluedino wrote: post #99
wayoutthere wrote: post #8

In the US, it's less active protest and more things like slacking off heavily at work because it's a treadmill we can't win. We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. We as a nation have basically told people "no, you can't have a comfortable life or save for retirement because your parents' generation still needs to get 10% annual growth to make their retirement mat…

>> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. Pride? Character? Respect from colleagues?

These ideas are mostly pressure exerted by companies to "do as I say, not as I do". Most companies don't care about this stuff beyond what will make them some extra bucks. It's not personal, it's business.

I'm not sure how the world got so fucked up where we expect people making poor wages to behave "better" than multi billion dollar businesses.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#126

Post by KirinDave »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #66
isodude wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is immigration tied to lower wages? Searching for it yields rather the opposite.

> Why is immigration tied to lower wages? Obviously this can greatly vary. In America, immigration is tied to lower wages for lower tier jobs like chefs, construction workers, factory workers. I don't know enough to state immigration's effects on high tier white collar jobs like software engineering.

> Obviously this can greatly vary. In America, immigration is tied to lower wages for lower tier jobs like chefs, construction workers, factory workers. I don't know enough to state immigration's effects on high tier white collar jobs like software engineering.

Can you show evidence this really happens even within lower wage jobs? Folks point out that not only are immigrants much less expensive labor for communities (in that there are qualified individuals arriving pre-trained and as active adults rather than locally trained and nurtured children), and that they tend to take different jobs than the native population does in most cases.

This is a surprisingly common take on the literature, with an unlikely consensus among both the conservative and radical left, libertarians and conservative libertarians, and even many on the conservative side.

The service industry is a particularly good example of how immigrants arriving into an economy tend to expand the economy to make room for themselves (they themselves need to contribute to the additional demand on the local services industry) rather than displacing the existing infrastructure.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#127

Post by KirinDave »

xienze wrote: post #32
isodude wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is immigration tied to lower wages? Searching for it yields rather the opposite.

You're a) expanding the labor pool with b) people willing to work for less money than the locals. How you think that doesn't drive down wages is beyond me.

You're making a positive proposition in the domain of economics. You're obligated to show evidence of it if you can, or at least propose a mechanism people can debate. It's entirely feasible to do so.

But good luck with that; I think the data shows that it's not a very pronounced effect.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#128

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jtcruthers wrote: post #28
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't comment on US, but Germany and some other EU countries have fertility rate below 1.5. Without immigration the system will collapse as pensioners will outnumber working population. EDIT: this is an observation, I am not advocating 'substitution'

Yes, lets bring in loads of uneducated, poor immigrants instead of addressing the issues causing fertility rates below the replacement level. Why let our children have families when we can import them for cheaper?

Do you know the difference between an immigrant and a refugee? Have you ever had to deal with the visa system of any western country?

I am in immigrant in the UK. You have to prove you have education, funds to support yourself, and a job offer with high salary. Add visa expenses, moving expenses, and you might realise only fairly 'privileged foreigners' can do this.

By all means, address issues causing low birthrates. But don't go around complaining about the unwashed masses, because kids from Somalia are never getting in.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#129

Post by sek »

"The more they feel that the system is rigged against them, the more they will demand the system itself be overthrown"

The author talks about it like the only alternative is overthrowing the system. This is another extreme, maybe the word you should use here is the social market economy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy). We use this term here in Germany, even our most deregulation friendly party is committed to it and by definition it's still capitalist.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#130

Post by standardUser »

perceptronas wrote: post #10

>After the 2008 recession, President Obama and the Democrats effectively saved capitalism from itself; a more radical leadership would fight to replace it with a better system. This time around there may be far more pressure from below to do just that, especially with a more organized left and more class conscious young people. As a former soviet occupied country citizen, I am amazed that westerners would want to ove…

Virtually no one wants to abandon capitalism. Many want to alter the public/private sector mix that makes up all modern economies, away from things like unfettered free enterprise, "corporate welfare", preferential treatment for the wealthy and other perceived excesses of capitalism. You may just be misunderstanding the debate, which makes sense since the terms we tend to use in these discussions border on meaningless.

No one wants to completely "overthrow capitalism" aside from a tiny fringe.

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