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Is everything falling apart?

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Re: Is everything falling apart?

#841

Post by b112 »

Clubber wrote: post #777
jaegerpicker wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average income in 1960 (as an example year since it wasn't listed) $6000 or 10% of that house. Average income in 2021 $65,000, well short of the $80,000 to equal 10% of the house. Also, there has been a large increase in other expenses. Most households had a single earner, leaving another adult to generally raise children. That's much rarer today. Two car households, higher utility bills, etc... The evidence is prett…

$10K in 1971, so 1/6th of the house. I suspect the people in this example made well more than that because buying a home at 6x income is not very responsible. That kinda skews the results because if you buy a home in an already well off neighborhood, I suspect the chances of it increasing in value are much better because the neighborhood has already proven to be valuable. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1…

Also, houses are massively larger today.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#842

Post by CamperBob2 »

heurist wrote: post #804
shrimpx wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that the open ability to perform damaging speech against institutions and public figures in the west was “cool” — a major distinguishing factor between free countries and non-free ones. But I was also always a little skeptical of that ability. It seemed ok in small doses, just to prove we can do it. Now we’re grappling with the full import of nonstop destructive speech coming from all sides and being…

I think it's a temporary phase introduced by the hyper-reflective nature of the internet. Younger generations will handle it better because they grew up in the new environment. Older generations are struggling to adapt.

I don't know. The older conservative generations not only seem to have adapted overnight, they have weaponized what we gave them.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#843

Post by ROTMetro »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #509
elefanten wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve never heard an argument about the “specialness” of that generation? I’ve only heard the relentless shit all the younger generations started talking about Boomers at some point. Which always came as a surprise to me… If we’re going to generalize about people based on generation (bad idea, but…)— I conclude that every generation since the Boomers has been linearly weaker and less competent, in aggregate, than the…

>I’ve only heard the relentless shit all the younger generations started talking about Boomers at some point. Counterreaction, a lot of voices claiming to speak for boomers, or boomers themselves, have done plenty to claim "it's just young people messing up". Despite the obvious that they have been the majority voter base for decades, have more wealth as a collective, and because of their age and wealth, tend to have…

     Dude, if you think that is different than any other generation ever well, hopefully when you get older you'll learn about perspective.
     The 'Greatest Generation's version of the boomers sent them to WW2 to die by the millions, but poor you, right? Never has a generation been handed such a shit sandwich by the generations before them as the boomers have handed you. Get over yourselves. You aren't so special in the list of generations.
     When the boomers had nothing in their youth they created the hippie culture where it didn't matter. Today's hyper consumerist tiktok generation think they have a right to live like the made up people on TikTok do. They aren't boomers, but you know the characters on the TV show Friends could never have lived like that in New York, right? That it was a fake show that portrayed an unrealistic quality life that young people working those jobs didn't actually live, right?
Finally, I'll just leave this here: https://www.humanprogress.org/u-s-housing-became-much-more-a... Interest rates rising will change the calculus, but it will also push housing prices down.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#844

Post by dbingham »

cnelsenmilt wrote: post #793
scrubs wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like these points: * We engineered away stability for JIT Yep. It would not kill us to recognize that globalization went 20% too far, and that supply chains in the US is good for us. We also have to deal with the fact that job loss v. cheaper goods has gone too far too. We need to swing back to a more US focused economy. Ex: I recently ordered brakes from a US company. They were out of stock of my model. I asked wh…

It's funny, because this should be a point of crossover for the (populist) left and the right. Basic nationalism on the one hand, "Buy Local" on the other. They all want the same thing, or close to it. The potential for alliance on economic topics like this is so blindingly obvious, and it's so frustrating that it gets derailed by "cultural" sideshows so that no one can talk to each other or realize they have the sam…

There is a framing in which they want the same thing, but each side wants to use a method to achieving that thing that is antithetical to the other. The left wants to achieve it by limiting the power of capital and corporations. The right wants to achieve it by limiting the power of democracy and restricting it to certain demographics. Each finds the other's method appalling.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#845

Post by hannibalhorn »

zdragnar wrote: post #181
RivieraKid wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did he think the paychecks would stop coming?

Not all pensions are well managed; some have needed bailing out from public coffers. Other companies have shuttered completely, and the lack of incoming money to the pension funds made them insolvent (again, not especially well managed).

Even well managed funds can result in someone getting the shaft. My dad's pension (Delphi Salaried) was cut to 50% of what it was supposed to be after the events of '08, and it was funded to something like $0.86 on the dollar, above the national average.

The hourly workers (i.e., unionized) still got 100%, which was pretty unfair.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#846

Post by ElectricalUnion »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #831
celticninja wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organized religion is a different kind of societal harm, where personal religion can be good or bad, organized religion will always be a net negative.

Organized religion helped to defeat Communism, and tempered dictatorial control of many despots in the middle east. So your statement is far removed from reality.

> Organized religion helped to defeat Communism

So it literally did nothing, because Communism doesn't exist in real life?

> tempered dictatorial control of many despots in the middle east

[citation needed]

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#847

Post by sanderjd »

lampshades wrote: post #641
sanderjd wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting comment, but one thing I don't get is the sports one. Why would lower participation in youth sports lead to a contraction of commercial sports? Does low youth participation in making TV shows hurt the market for consuming them?

Everyone I know that didn't grow up playing sports also doesn't watch them.

N=1... Very few people have ever played american football, yet it has the largest audience of all US sports.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#848

Post by ROTMetro »

jjav wrote: post #599
bsenftner wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. They are the institutions and they do not trust themselves, as is clear via the leadership stalemate and both parties destroying their best hopes in favor of the crumbling and ever more distant wealthy status quo.

> And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge No, "they" are not. The few people in the inner political circles of that generation are in charge, same as every other time in history. The normal hardworking people are never in charge. I remember when in middle school (Gen X here) I thought when our youth generation grows up and gets to be in charge the world will be better, because everyon…

As a gen-x-er I agree. I realized this year that in the last 30 years politically, NOT ONE STEP OF PROGRESS HAS HAPPENED. 30 years ago the big political issues were culture wars (Gingrich vs Clinton), row v wade, unaffordable healthcare. Guess what we have today? Culture wars, row v wade, unaffordable healthcare, unaffordable housing. Fuck, well, that's progress. If you try to support a third party things it splits the vote so much things are too divided so nothing gets done. Support a mainstream party, surprisingly, also nothing gets done. For 30 years. Before my generation they stymied the hippies. Before that the Lost Generation was just made invisible by the Greatest Generation. And the Greatest Generation was made too exhausted by fighting WW2. It is not a generational issue. I promise, no generation says 'I don't want things to be better for my kids'. It's our political class. They are garbage.

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#849

Post by ROTMetro »

sleepdreamy wrote: post #441
Clubber wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And the baby boomers who created the upset of the 60's are now in charge, and their disillusioned leadership is pushing these divisions ever wider. Why do people think of an entire generation of people as a single minded entity? Might as well say, "women," or "men," or "humans." Did you know the majority of baby boomers weren't hippies? Looking at documentaries of the era, you'd think they were. Many boomers hated h…

Is this sarcasm? It's truly laughable if you don't think boomers had a clear advantage in comparison to Millennials, Gen X, etc; I'm sorry you didn't reap the benefits of the most benevolent time in America's history but plenty of your Boomer counter-parts sure as hell did. I've met enough Boomers that there is nothing wrong with generalizing Boomers as a whole. Just like a huge percentage of my generation totally ga…

https://www.humanprogress.org/u-s-housing-became-much-more-a...

Re: Is everything falling apart?

#850

Post by Melting_Harps »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #818
scrubs wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like these points: * We engineered away stability for JIT Yep. It would not kill us to recognize that globalization went 20% too far, and that supply chains in the US is good for us. We also have to deal with the fact that job loss v. cheaper goods has gone too far too. We need to swing back to a more US focused economy. Ex: I recently ordered brakes from a US company. They were out of stock of my model. I asked wh…

> We need to swing back to a more US focused economy. > Cheaper medical, education, housing is what other 95% could use. Eds, meds, and beds can't be outsourced, which is why they're increasingly too expensive for workers. Fix the first problem above and the second will follow.

> Eds, meds, and beds can't be outsourced, which is why they're increasingly too expensive for workers. Fix the first problem above and the second will follow.

Education has been forcefully disrupted, by the institutions themselves no less: Zoom School proved what most of us knew all along, most institutions are just costly degree mills with little to no emphasis on truly educated their students. I personally attend a CompSci program from a university in the UK and it's quite flexible and affordable when compared to US standards.

Meds can and should be outsourced where ever possible: US,,Switzerland, Germany and France are the gold standard for reasons I don't time have to explain here, but there is no reason we couldn't just acquire their drugs and medical devices at wholesale prices from the aforementioned nations if the US pharma complex refuses to play ball and compete on price.

Thousands of nurses are on strike right now as we speak in Stanford, and many more are expected to quit the Industry entirely in the next coming years nation wide after being abused by the system during COVID.

This could be the perfect time to re-negotiate the terms imposed by the AMA and the Industry as a whole, ideally opening the roles to more practitioners and thus lowering the costs.

Housing, is sadly the last (investment) refuge of the dying middle class' networth in the US: I highly doubt that will be disrupted until 3-d printing of homes becomes common place, continuing the remote-first work place will definitely help in that, but right now the transition is that high paid tech workers can move and gentrify previously affordable areas.

I under stand that it's partly creative destruction, and to be honest as a digital nomad with no real need to stay in the US, I'm staying the hell out until these things are resolved--which I'm sure they will in time.

I see no real need to be in the US if my quality of life and standard of living is only going to continue to be impaired to prop up the decaying business models of archaic monoliths who have systematically reduced the standards of living for so many.

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