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By JohnRawls
#15032897
Drlee wrote:Oh are you the little injured snowflake. Well snowflake, here is a lesson in life 101. Clearly you haven't gotten there yet. I will assume you are an American but if you aren't just suck it up.

What we are leaving you is the richest and most powerful country on the planet. We are leaving you a more resilient economy than ever before. We are leaving you a debt alright but one that is completely manageable. (When you take econ 101 in school you will learn why. If you want a quick explanation I suggest that you search this forum and see @blackjack21 excellent comments on it. Or ask @JohnRawls to 'splain it to you.



Sorry son. I am still working. No time for a nap. I am earning an income you should probably hope to earn someday if you can learn to keep your mouth shut and your ears open.



If you are who I am supposed to turn everything over to I have a quick answer. Not yet.




On the contrary. I have a whole lot of it if what you mean is motivation, money and education. Throw in a little political influence and that's about it.



We boomers are not a group. We are probably far more diverse in opinion than your generation is. But then you see we invented your generation.



You need to grow up and learn how life works. Here are the bullet points.

1. It is not my job to hand you the world in a neat package tied up with a ribbon. I didn't get the world that way and you won't either. You need to get off your mommies tit, stop whining like a bitch and go to work. You want it different? Change it. The only think stopping you is you.

2. The world you live in when you are my age will be one of your own inventing. My father would not recognize today's world and, if I popped back in in another 50 years I doubt I would recognize yours.

3. You are going to face some serious shit. You need to stop looking for someone to blame and get busy preparing yourself mentally, educationally and physically for the challenges. I could bitch about how the WWII generation left the world for us....filled with racism, sexism, filthy beyond belief (pollution was infinitely worse) putting gay folks in jail, facing a world-ending nuclear holocaust with an unstable superpower, disease ridden and so much more. We went a long way to fixing this shit. And the job is far from over. Sorry to disappoint you. If you were my age and black you could tell us about not being allowed to use the white drinking fountain and how you would go to the back of the restaurant to get your food to eat outside. If you were a woman you could tell us about how you were fired for telling the boss you were thinking about having a child. If you were gay you could tell us about your 20 year prison sentence for sodomy. If you lived in LA you could tell us about how your eyes burned from smog every morning on the way to work.

But you see little man, you aren't any of those things. But I work with amazing people of your generation every day. Just yesterday I had a group of 8 students in the clinic working with the homeless. They were wonderful, empowered, concerned and committed to making the world better. They did not stare at me and ask, "how could you let this happen"? They just rolled up their sleeves and said, "where do we start"? If you get over your arrogant whining maybe some day you can be like them. I suspect you won't. I suspect that instead of getting ready for life's challenges you will spend the day playing a video game and trying to think up a pithy response to this post.

So here is the short summary. Suck it up snowflake. Stop blaming me and get to work. Get busy or the world will happily roll right over you. Always has and always will.


@Code Rood I assume DRlee was responding to you.

Below is to DRLee but i think its relevant to you both. I just had trouble understanding who DRLee was talking to.

I mean this is true to a degree but whoever you were responding too has a flawed yet correct point. You are a boomer, blackjack is probably a late Gen Z and i am an early millenial while the person you are talking to is probably a middle/late millenial of sorts.

What he says is not incorrect that boomers fucked up the generations after them but that is a gross generalisation honestly. Boomers didn't have much of a choice. 70's stagflation and eventual rise of Neoliberalism/Thatcherism/Reaganomics was an answer to that. There are 2 parts to capitalism: Capital and labour basically. (Lets ignore farmers, Ricardo didn't live in the 21st century) So the Cold War model favoured labour extensively compared to capital because otherwise Nazis or Commies would have taken over. It was the reality of the time. But that system ultimately hurt capital with ever dicreasing profits and that is not exactly how capitalism works. You can't have 0 profits because that would be communism.

The policies that boomers chose is an expected outcome because it was in their best interest. I mean who would not vote for their best interest, it is stupid. Boomers model did work for a time but as any model it had its downsides. Basically it might have given boomer generation unprecedented prosperity but it hurt the 95% of wage workers in the very long run. Also nobody is an oracle, this Globalised model with hyper competitive labour markets and huge profit margins works and could work forever IF everyone were of equal standing economically. The problem is that people in India get paid 1/50th of what we get paid in the US or Europe. And both India and China have billions in free manpower that is not exmployed while employment in US and Europe is what? 95 to 90% in most cases. Over a long period of time it degrades the standards of wage labour in US and Europe and this is the main cause of Trumpism, Brexit, etc.

But blaming boomers and gloryfying Trump is not really a solution. Trump might be one of the few who instinctively understands this or is just lucky but his solutions are all over the place and will not work.

1) Immigration? Immigration is like 1% from the problem of hyper competitive labour market which stems from the fact that any worker is competing on a global market against 1/50th wages from India or China or Africa etc. So if you live in a low wage country you have huge advantage while if you live in US / EU then you are fucked. Even if you stop all immigration it changes nothing. This is even besides the point that immigration, in general, helps with more workers in your own country that pay taxes and contribute. (Kim working in the US gets the same wage as you while Kim working in China gets 1/50th of your wage. This is an easy to understand concept.)

2) Economic war for better trade deals. I mean getting better trade deals help but it doesn't fix anything. The same model is still there. It just shifts the burden of pain to somebody else depending on the trade deal. Ultimately it doesn't matter for the Millenial worker if patents are safeguarded by China or not. This is a problem of capital and their assets being devalued or destroyed. It won't hold any significant relevance to anybody as a worker. If the patent is in China then spoiler alert, it is probably already outsourced and point 1 kicks in. So all this China trade war talk is basically another way to screw the working millenials over basically.

3) Tax cuts. On the surface it looks nice that people did actually get a pay rise because the taxes wen't down. This is good news for millenials who never seen one before. Again, this is not a hard to understand concept. If you paid 10% of 5000 and now you are paying 5% of 5000 then you are going to get 250 USD more. But this misses the whole point of the problem. Profits from capital are the highest in capitalist history perhaps. Especially for companies like Google, Amazon etc who are essentially monopolists. This is a one of thing that has negative side effects like less government spending on services -> you have to more from your pocket -> nothing changes in the long run. ( Take education for example. Is there a difference to you if you pay for it through Credit or if its funded by the government through taxes? There are differences but essentially you are still loosing money but in a different manner. )

4) The gist of the problem for millenials is that we are basically not getting paid enough. Boomers managed to earn a lot of money during Cold war times and then started investing/saving it during Neoliberalism boom. So right now this capital is working through the financial system as cheap credit for us but in return this created the current low employment/low inflation/low wages problem. In essence low inflation is good for boomer capital and earned money for them but it is really bad for millenials because low inflation essentially means that employment can't reach 100% and wages can't be allowed to rise otherwise there will be inflation. So to compensate, we take cheap credit which is hard to pay back without inflation/higher wages. This is basically the suicide loop for the millenials. (Where the boomer blame comes from aka Boomers fucked us up)

Trump election kinda opened peoples eyes a lot to this. For example, AOC in America. She is basically Trump who uses the same basis just comes with a different answer. High Taxes, High Spending, Strong labour unions etc. This is how it worked during the Cold War. But once again, she misses the point why it worked during the Cold War. The World was segmented and there was much more capital controls on movement, tax havens were few, investment options were limited etc. We gave up all of that to please the financial sector and profits since boomers had a lot of money to invest/save. AOC is ultimately closer to what I would call a solution but still also not there. A mix of Trump + AOC is actually needed perhaps with a realisation that we DO need to tone down on Globalization. For Example limit it to EU, US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia etc Basically places that already have high wages, relatively high employment etc. Otherwise nothing will change in the grander scheme of things.

It is a bit heartless in regards to India, China, Africa etc. But for millenials to have a better life that is what needs to be done. May be there is a solution where we can force China, India, Africa to pay its workers the same but i doubt it can be done over night or in a year. If this doesn't happen then waiting 100 or 200 years is not really an option.
By Code Rood
#15032919
Drlee wrote:Oh are you the little injured snowflake. Well snowflake, here is a lesson in life 101. Clearly you haven't gotten there yet. I will assume you are an American but if you aren't just suck it up.


You're the one that's clearly bothered by my silly comments about boomers and their Harleys and their obsession with mowing the lawn, so I don't think that I'm the snowflake here.
By Code Rood
#15032923
BigSteve wrote:@Code Rood



It's not my generation's responsibility to make sure you have a decent future. Get off your ass, get a job, move out of Mom's basement and earn what you think you should have.

If your future sucks, it's your fault and no one else's...


Typical. You simply don't want to understand anything. And what makes you think that I don't have a job? Because I have the audacity to make fun of and criticize boomer bullshit?
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By BigSteve
#15032924
Code Rood wrote:You're the one that's clearly bothered by my silly comments about boomers and their Harleys and their obsession with mowing the lawn, so I don't think that I'm the snowflake here.


I have kids like you who mow my lawn.

Wait, my bad. They're not like you. They're out there, making money, developing a solid work ethic and actually contributing.

You're on an internet forum whining...
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By BigSteve
#15032926
Code Rood wrote:Typical. You simply don't want to understand anything.


All you want me to "understand" is that you believe you're owed something. You want me to "understand" that you think it's my responsibility, and not yours, to provide for your future.

Lemme' know how that works out for you...

And what makes you think that I don't have a job? Because I have the audacity to make fun of and criticize boomer bullshit?


No, because it's the middle of the fucking day and you're online whining. If you had a job, you'd be working...
By Code Rood
#15032928
BigSteve wrote:No, because it's the middle of the fucking day and you're online whining. If you had a job, you'd be working...


Ever heard of different time zones?
User avatar
By BigSteve
#15032931
Code Rood wrote:Ever heard of different time zones?


Sure.

If you're on the east coast, it's going for 1:30pm and you should be at work.

If you live on the west coast it's going for 10:30am, and you should be at work.

Just admit now that you don't have a job and we can move on...
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By Drlee
#15032943
Thank you JohnRawls. I have learned a great deal from you over the years.

I agree that we had little choice. 20/20 hindsight indicts every generation. We, like every generation before us, did what we thought was right at the time. Some things we got right and some we got wrong.

Politics is first and foremost the art of the doable. It was not politically doable for us to impose draconian conditions on ourselves even if we knew that in some areas we ought to.

As a conservative I have been crying about the deficit for years. In time I have come to see that it is not the elephant in the corner that we thought it might be. But we are doing too much on the cuff.

And @Code Rood ...I second what Big Steve said.
By Rich
#15032954
BigSteve wrote:You're on an internet forum whining...

And you're on an internet forum whining about someone whining on an internet forum.

I do plenty of whinging on this forum and sometimes I wish I spent less time whining on this forum and more time coding. But we are where are. The question is not whether I whine, but how legitemate are my whines? Am I being hypocritcal, inconsistent, petty, ignorant or illogical. How do my whines compare with the competing whines for the forum members attention.

Actually these days coding often involves interacting with GIthub issues. Issues are really just Github's name for whining. ;)
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By BigSteve
#15032959
Rich wrote:And you're on an internet forum whining about someone whining on an internet forum.


I'm pretty much retired, Sport. I've eared the right. LOL!

I do plenty of whinging on this forum...


Really, you could've just stopped there...

The question is not whether I whine, but how legitemate are my whines?


See, that's the thing: Your whines aren't legitimate at all.

There... now aren't you glad you asked?
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By Crantag
#15032966
Drlee wrote:Thank you JohnRawls. I have learned a great deal from you over the years.

I agree that we had little choice. 20/20 hindsight indicts every generation. We, like every generation before us, did what we thought was right at the time. Some things we got right and some we got wrong.

Politics is first and foremost the art of the doable. It was not politically doable for us to impose draconian conditions on ourselves even if we knew that in some areas we ought to.

As a conservative I have been crying about the deficit for years. In time I have come to see that it is not the elephant in the corner that we thought it might be. But we are doing too much on the cuff.

And @Code Rood ...I second what Big Steve said.

@JohnRawls made a lot of really good points there.

On the common trend of deficits don't matter (which has actually been a common trend since the US abandoned the Gold Exchange Standard under Nixon--which was a doomed system to be sure and needed to be abandoned because there was no choice).

The US national debt is approaching $22 trillion. A huge amount of revenue goes to servicing it.

The debt greatly ballooned under Obama.

Why?

The simple reason that the government was receiving much less tax revenue, from corporations (taxes are based on profits), and perhaps secondarily from individuals, etc.

Tertiary factors included bank bail outs and other government spending, perhaps.

My reply here has to do with your stated apathy to deficits.

This is all my own analysis. But, say another crisis strikes. Say tax revenues from corporations (and all the rest) take another severe nose dive.

We could be looking at $30 trillion plus in debt over a short time period.

This sort of thing is nothing to be unconcerned about. Recently I have been thinking of it as a sword of Damocles, hanging over the US economy.
By foxdemon
#15032974
@JohnRawls

What do you mean by globalisation? What would this look like for an OECD block?


Regarding baby boomers, here is a report about generation inequity in Australia.

https://grattan.edu.au/report/generation-gap/


You will find links to download the full report and graphs on that webpage.

In a nutshell, baby boomers have been paying less tax relative to what the young pay, while owning more wealth. Furthermore the baby boomers didn’t pay the proportion of income on tax for their parents generation that they now expect the young to pay for them. Finally, they seem to have a disproportionate demand on government services.


The report recommends increasing taxation on baby boomers.


In an ideal world, this extra tax revenue would go on the basic infrastructure to provide a foundation for the future economy. Unfortunately, due to geopolitics in Asia, defense spending will likely have to double from 2% to 4% in the near future. I guess the baby boomers in Australia will have to fund an increased military to compensate for declining US military strength in the region.

But then, why should Australian baby boomers live it up while young Australians are left behind and the US goes into debt to pay for Australian baby boomer’s security?
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By JohnRawls
#15032986
Drlee wrote:Thank you JohnRawls. I have learned a great deal from you over the years.

I agree that we had little choice. 20/20 hindsight indicts every generation. We, like every generation before us, did what we thought was right at the time. Some things we got right and some we got wrong.

Politics is first and foremost the art of the doable. It was not politically doable for us to impose draconian conditions on ourselves even if we knew that in some areas we ought to.

As a conservative I have been crying about the deficit for years. In time I have come to see that it is not the elephant in the corner that we thought it might be. But we are doing too much on the cuff.

And @Code Rood ...I second what Big Steve said.


I mean people are somehow under the impression that the politicians snap their fingers and things instantly change. That is not how it happens. The Cold War system didn't instantly disappear when Thatcher, Reagan, Nixon etc started changing it. It was a gradual process over a long period of time. The Boomers just had the benefit of getting employed and then the system changed so you got both good wages and work experience which later carried on to savings and investment benefits with Neoliberalism. In essence you had it really good in this regard.

For example housing, the pain for millenials right now. High inflation from the Cold War days made housing cheap and since movement of capital was limited the prices were less inflated. So lets say you bought your house in the 60-70s using a mortgage. Well, congratulations, not only was it cheaper what it is now but also inflation probably destroyed 50% of that mortgage. So it wasn't a big problem to buy a house. Now its the other way around, housing is basically a "Safe asset" for foreign capital who want to run away from Russia, China, India or whatever other place they made the money in outside the West. Big EU/US cities are examples of this. So the prices are not only sky high because of this but there is also no inflation to drop them down. The only reason millenials can afford housing at all is because the debt is so cheap right now.

Regarding work. If you don't get the best education possible or if you don't bust your ass off, you won't get a job which means that you won't get any experience working which means you prolly won't get a better job in the same field. It is much more competitive in this regard and ultimately it hurts people. There are jokes about workplaces looking for people straight out of college 20ish years old with 5 years of work experience. But the sad part that its not a joke, its a reality for our generation.

But blaming boomers for all this is nonsense. There is no possible way that they could have foreseen all of this. They had their own problems to deal with which they did. Its like asking Napoleon to foresee the threat that German empire will pose to France. (If some don't understand the metaphore. Very simply Napoleon revolution -> Napoleon expansion -> Creation of the puppet alliance in Germany -> Germans get to read new philosophy and see benefits of the Napoleonic revolution -> Germans never want to be harassed again by a powerful enemy that they can't beat one by one -> Liberals consider creation of German state -> they fail -> Prussia takes over -> etc ) That is just too far in the future. Boomers were fixing their own problems.

@foxdemon

What i mean by globalisation is that Labour and Capital has gone global.(Across all of the world where there is a semblance of order. Doesn't even have to be rule of law. Just tolerable condition.)

So instead of competing inside only your own country, you need to compete on a global market. At its core, in theory, it is a very good thing. Will make everyone better of, competition works so long as its fair. The problem is that it is not fair competition at all when you have the Capital (US, EU, etc) and somebody doesn't (India, China, Russia etc). On the other hand it is also not fair to labour in US, EU, etc because the pay here is in the several thousands while its good for Russia, China, India etc labour whos pay is in the hundreds if not dozens EU or USD per month. Of course Capital will love this, new investment opportunities that can be filled by our own capital while nobody else has any. Of course our workers will hate this because they are put in a situation where they are told to fuck off, since there is way cheaper labour who are more or less have the same qualifications.

This is the glorious story of Neoliberalism.(Economies grow and less developed countries grow really fast) The great equaliser, unprecedented prosperity for the World. It doesn't mention that this prosperity is at the expense of the more developed nations, well, their common people. Common people just don't feel it anymore. There is bound to be an explosion and a heavier shift to ideologies who notice this aka Communists, Nationalist of any kind etc. Well , at least until the centre doesn't wake up.

As for how to get out of it. Essentially yes, globalisation and the global market should be only between the OECD countries. We should cut Africa, India, China etc off fully. It will suck for them but i just don't see another way out. It will force capital to increase wages because employment and wages are pretty high in OECD countries already and there is no billion unemployed workers around who will work for pennies. It will fuck around with the margins for monopolists/outsourcers BUT it will also help the small and medium size businesses since all sides will compete on more or less even playing field now.

There is a small worry that some companies will die because of this but it is neglible. A company won't die if its profit margins fall from 40% to 30% or from 20% to 15%. They are still making a killing. But it will prevent them from maximizing profits like they do now: Keeping expenditure low, keeping margins high and getting their stock valued in the billions simply because they are so efficient without even growing in size or doing anything. Now they will actually have to expand all around and do something instead since there will not be a place where labour cost is 0 while the government gives you 0 tax rate for 10 years on top of building all of your infrastructure for you. The business that currently live of 3% or 5% is usually a business that can't outsource or relies on some other strategy like building chains everywhere for example McDonalds. Its not priced so high because its super efficient, its priced so high because it has many restaraunts, employs a lot of people and actually feeds like 1% of the human population every day.
By foxdemon
#15033069
Here is an article I read today. Apparently Japanese youths are glum. OECD youth generally are less optimistic about the future than their peers in China or India. I guess that is the difference between societies in decline and societies in the ascent.


https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/05/01/commentary/japan-commentary/japanese-teens-glum/#.XXdyOhp_Wf0


Thank you for the explanation. That is what I thought you were suggesting but I had to get clarification.

One issue is transformative technology such as additive manufacturing. Even with restrictions on capital, immigration and trade to prevent global structural issues unbalancing OECD economies, new technology might exclude the youth anyway.

A second issue is that the economies outside the OECD might become richer than the combined OECD block in a few decades. Consider Australia and Indonesia. Though Australia is richer per capita, Indonesia already has a bigger GDP. Given there is a larger population outside the OECD, the rest of the world should ultimately become the larger economy.

However, excluding the rest of the world might force nations like China, India and Indonesia to have to develop their own domestic markets. That means allowing increasing wages to create demand. At present the elites in developing countries do very well out of OECD markets while suppressing their own middle class.
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By Hindsite
#15033179
BigSteve wrote:@Code Rood

It's not my generation's responsibility to make sure you have a decent future. Get off your ass, get a job, move out of Mom's basement and earn what you think you should have.

If your future sucks, it's your fault and no one else's...

Keep it up BigSteve.
Praise the Lord
User avatar
By blackjack21
#15033267
me wrote:I don't know. He (John Bolton) wouldn't be my first choice. However, keep your enemies closer is always good advice.

me wrote:Trump didn't start the war on ISIS, Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Code Rood wrote:Where did I say that?

Well, your implication is that Trump is a bog standard establishment neoliberal/neoconservative. He's not. He just fired Bolton. Maybe Trump's reading our posts. :-)

jimjam wrote:Trump hatred is a much more potent force in this country than Trump love.

Having amorous feelings to Marianne Williamson are we? If that's the case, it doesn't seem to inure to the benefit of the Democrats based on the turnout at their rallies. Maybe the frontrunners of the Democrats should dump trying to ban hamburgers and win back the blue collar working class vote. I hardly see how going into the 2020 election calling blue collar workers "fat" is going to be a winning formula. Then again, crazier things have happened. Trump is president!

jimjam wrote:The Republican Party, that foul agglomeration of bigotry and avarice that has turned American politics into a dystopian farce, will not just be defeated but destroyed and a Democratic Party liberated from the nation’s suffocating polarization could then use government to advance the public good.

Like when Obama, or Clinton were president?

jimjam wrote:We are at a turning point just as we were in 1932 when F.D.R. ushered in a period of government attempting to do the greatest good for the greatest number of citizens …….

Yeah. At this turning point, the bill for the New Deal and the Great Society are coming due. Gross investment has to be a big component of increasing GDP to service the debt. The alternative is that tariffs can do a lot too, but it means that a lot of places around the world will collapse economically as the US overcomes the debt by restricting access to US consumers. As I've said before, with China devaluing, it's China that's going to be facing inflation. The US has it in to a degree in asset prices, while consumer staples remain non-inflationary or even deflationary. That's a bit of a paradox. As countries like Germany run negative interest rates, American bonds become so attractive that it's inverting our yield curve with relatively low interest rates.

jimjam wrote:According to recent PEW data 62 percent of Americans say that immigrants strengthen the country, while 28 percent, a near record low, see them as a burden.

I agree Melania Trump strengthens the country. ;-)

Code Rood wrote:So you really don't think demographics is an issue, do you?

Demographics isn't the issue. Assumptions based on the demographics is the issue. While FoxNews has changed their lineup, it's erstwhile line up shows how old assumptions failed miserably. Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity would be natural Irish, Catholic Democrats if the assumptions of 1960 held sway. That didn't happen. Abortion forced many Catholics to split from the Democratic party and made many socially conservative reliable Democratic voters become Republicans--something that isn't talked about, as the media still tries to sell the narrative that all the racists from the Democratic party became Republicans, and all the Civil Rights Republicans became Democrats. Hispanics are socially conservative, family-oriented, entrepreneurial and Catholic. Expecting them to vote for the Democrats forever is deeply misguided. So far, only black voters have maintained a political allegiance that's counter to their values, and that may change soon too.

Code Rood wrote:Have fun with the legal immigrants from countries like Somalia and Pakistan, if you ever get to meet them.

Yeah, Ilhan Omar is a real credit to the United States.

foxdemon wrote:The Democrats are trying to start impeachment proceedings......again!

That's because there is no agenda to run on. They decided not to pass any significant legislation in hopes that Trump's popularity would wane. Kamala Harris lamenting red meat isn't going to go over well among the working class.

Code Rood wrote:Bringing in people from around the world isn't logical and doesn't really make a country better. In fact, it has done the exact opposite.

That's why I think the laments of people like Mick Jagger are hilarious. It hasn't occurred to the people lamenting all the division that diversity and division have the same root word. It's clear that such people have no idea what they are talking about.

Code Rood wrote:For one, a society that's unrecognizable compared to the one you grew up in as a child. It's a radical change.

Again, I find it comical that people complain about division and a society tearing itself apart and think more immigration is a really good idea. However, progress will necessarily make a society unrecognizable. The Americans who won WWII were born to people who saw the closing of the frontier and the Indian wars. There's a big difference between riding horseback and dropping an atomic bomb from a B-29.

Code Rood wrote:A country that's trillions in debt and a society that's way too diverse (and thus divisive) is not a pretty combination. A major crisis isn't far away. Only a fool doesn't prepare for the worst after taking a good look at how insane society has become.

Well, in many respects, a major crisis is here. Donald Trump is president. That's something the establishment could never have fathomed. He is set to be re-elected too. The establishment cannot believe that a major result of their push for radical diversity is that the electorate is roundly rejecting the establishment from all sides and for a diversity of reasons they do not comprehend.

Code Rood wrote:Only mindless consumerism can keep this thing temporary together.

Prosperity would be a better choice of words. Things will get uglier in a recession, but not just in the United States. In Western Europe, the increase in populism, nationalism and right wing politics will not find the beauty and wisdom in the left's mass migration policies and the political fallout therefrom.

foxdemon wrote:You need to take a more positive view of the future. History is full of interesting times. Yet things work themselves out eventually. Again, a nice break from worrying about the world’s problems will help you see things from a fresh perspective.

Some people still whine on about the Holocaust, and lament Holocaust deniers and so forth. Germany was a great country at the turn of the last century. They are an even greater country now. As Ilhan Omar might put it, between then and now, some people did some things, and other people were not very happy about it. You could say, "Hey. No big deal. Live and learn. We have the State of Israel now. Progress!" Today, Germany is heading into recession with a much more diverse population, and the German economy is desperately dependent on exports at a time when the UK is trying to get out of the EU, and UK politicians--clearly bought off--are trying to do their level best to remain in a union that isn't democratic, while using all the rhetoric of democracy to undermine democracy. That's not to say that we won't be better off in the future. It is to say that we often find ourselves in horribly violent conflicts due to persistent mismanagement. When the masses decide that this mismanagement isn't a function of stupidity, but rather something done by design, they may "do some things" as Omar might put it.

Code Rood wrote:The conservatives of today are pretty much the liberals of 10 years ago.

Well, this is why nobody believes the establishment anymore. It's also why you can't beat Donald Trump with moral outrage in a society that unironically claims that homosexual marriage is a basic right in the US constitution. The establishment wants people to believe that homosexual marriage is a basic right, and that Donald Trump is immoral for banging a stripper and they cannot see the impossibility of such a position. They have no sense of irony, nor any sense of humor either. People like Mitt Romney lament the firing of John Bolton, but it doesn't occur to him that his own dalliance with war mongers was part of why he wasn't able to defeat an otherwise very beatable Obama.

Then again, perhaps he lost intentionally. That was my sneaking suspicious with Jeb Bush in 2016--that his objective was to lose gracefully.

Drlee wrote:If you want a quick explanation I suggest that you search this forum and see @blackjack21 excellent comments on it.

The US will make it out of this debt bubble, but a lot of people will get squeezed in the process. People who cannot afford to buy a home are getting squeezed on rents in California. In some respects, it's creating a huge gap between those who can service debt and those who can't. I get credit card offers with balance transfers with a 3% fee and 0-1% for 12-18 months on unsecured debt. It's cheaper than my mortgage for unsecured debt. Granted, I have stellar credit. I frankly find it amazing that I can command such terms.

JohnRawls wrote:You are a boomer, blackjack is probably a late Gen Z and i am an early millenial while the person you are talking to is probably a middle/late millenial of sorts.

I'm GenX. Born in late 1967.

JohnRawls wrote:70's stagflation and eventual rise of Neoliberalism/Thatcherism/Reaganomics was an answer to that.

Well, outsourcing was a great way to kill stagflation. Wages are finally increasing a bit. Repatriating financial capital is helping (by cutting the corporate tax rate). Repatriating physical capital will help more--help the US more. It won't help other parts of the world.

JohnRawls wrote:You can't have 0 profits because that would be communism.

Well, Japan and Germany have effectively negative interest rates. What do you call that?

JohnRawls wrote:1) Immigration? Immigration is like 1% from the problem of hyper competitive labour market which stems from the fact that any worker is competing on a global market against 1/50th wages from India or China or Africa etc. So if you live in a low wage country you have huge advantage while if you live in US / EU then you are fucked. Even if you stop all immigration it changes nothing. This is even besides the point that immigration, in general, helps with more workers in your own country that pay taxes and contribute. (Kim working in the US gets the same wage as you while Kim working in China gets 1/50th of your wage. This is an easy to understand concept.)

If that were true. Kim working for himself in the US and an illegal immigrant doesn't pay half of his earnings to the IRS and state tax board as required by law. The opposition to illegal immigrants is all about wage depression--and that's why the chamber of commerce likes illegal immigration.

JohnRawls wrote:2) Economic war for better trade deals. I mean getting better trade deals help but it doesn't fix anything. The same model is still there. It just shifts the burden of pain to somebody else depending on the trade deal. Ultimately it doesn't matter for the Millenial worker if patents are safeguarded by China or not. This is a problem of capital and their assets being devalued or destroyed. It won't hold any significant relevance to anybody as a worker. If the patent is in China then spoiler alert, it is probably already outsourced and point 1 kicks in. So all this China trade war talk is basically another way to screw the working millenials over basically.

Most popular music today sucks. Part of it is quantizing and pitch correction and synthesizers replacing real musicians. Another part of it is that copyright law isn't respected since Napster came along. So who wants to fork out $500 to produce an album that's going to get downloaded for free? Nobody. China will ultimately kill innovation the way Napster and successors killed popular music. So allowing importers to bring in anything covered by patents from a country that doesn't respect intellectual property is probably a bad idea. The whole point of patents is to share ideas, but to give the inventor a significant profit during his/her/it lifetime. When we revert to trade secrets, innovation will slow.

So ultimately, China does need to have its wings clipped.

I work in open source software. We give it away for free. Software used to be a 90% gross margin business selling licenses. Now they are selling software as a service and platform as a service. Guess what has the biggest advantage? Software that is open source and free. It's cut throat. Free also produces innovation. Theft, however, usually doesn't. It will be interesting to see what happens with Huawei.
User avatar
By JohnRawls
#15033287
blackjack21 wrote:Well, your implication is that Trump is a bog standard establishment neoliberal/neoconservative. He's not. He just fired Bolton. Maybe Trump's reading our posts. :-)


Having amorous feelings to Marianne Williamson are we? If that's the case, it doesn't seem to inure to the benefit of the Democrats based on the turnout at their rallies. Maybe the frontrunners of the Democrats should dump trying to ban hamburgers and win back the blue collar working class vote. I hardly see how going into the 2020 election calling blue collar workers "fat" is going to be a winning formula. Then again, crazier things have happened. Trump is president!


Like when Obama, or Clinton were president?


Yeah. At this turning point, the bill for the New Deal and the Great Society are coming due. Gross investment has to be a big component of increasing GDP to service the debt. The alternative is that tariffs can do a lot too, but it means that a lot of places around the world will collapse economically as the US overcomes the debt by restricting access to US consumers. As I've said before, with China devaluing, it's China that's going to be facing inflation. The US has it in to a degree in asset prices, while consumer staples remain non-inflationary or even deflationary. That's a bit of a paradox. As countries like Germany run negative interest rates, American bonds become so attractive that it's inverting our yield curve with relatively low interest rates.


I agree Melania Trump strengthens the country. ;-)


Demographics isn't the issue. Assumptions based on the demographics is the issue. While FoxNews has changed their lineup, it's erstwhile line up shows how old assumptions failed miserably. Bill O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity would be natural Irish, Catholic Democrats if the assumptions of 1960 held sway. That didn't happen. Abortion forced many Catholics to split from the Democratic party and made many socially conservative reliable Democratic voters become Republicans--something that isn't talked about, as the media still tries to sell the narrative that all the racists from the Democratic party became Republicans, and all the Civil Rights Republicans became Democrats. Hispanics are socially conservative, family-oriented, entrepreneurial and Catholic. Expecting them to vote for the Democrats forever is deeply misguided. So far, only black voters have maintained a political allegiance that's counter to their values, and that may change soon too.


Yeah, Ilhan Omar is a real credit to the United States.


That's because there is no agenda to run on. They decided not to pass any significant legislation in hopes that Trump's popularity would wane. Kamala Harris lamenting red meat isn't going to go over well among the working class.


That's why I think the laments of people like Mick Jagger are hilarious. It hasn't occurred to the people lamenting all the division that diversity and division have the same root word. It's clear that such people have no idea what they are talking about.


Again, I find it comical that people complain about division and a society tearing itself apart and think more immigration is a really good idea. However, progress will necessarily make a society unrecognizable. The Americans who won WWII were born to people who saw the closing of the frontier and the Indian wars. There's a big difference between riding horseback and dropping an atomic bomb from a B-29.


Well, in many respects, a major crisis is here. Donald Trump is president. That's something the establishment could never have fathomed. He is set to be re-elected too. The establishment cannot believe that a major result of their push for radical diversity is that the electorate is roundly rejecting the establishment from all sides and for a diversity of reasons they do not comprehend.


Prosperity would be a better choice of words. Things will get uglier in a recession, but not just in the United States. In Western Europe, the increase in populism, nationalism and right wing politics will not find the beauty and wisdom in the left's mass migration policies and the political fallout therefrom.


Some people still whine on about the Holocaust, and lament Holocaust deniers and so forth. Germany was a great country at the turn of the last century. They are an even greater country now. As Ilhan Omar might put it, between then and now, some people did some things, and other people were not very happy about it. You could say, "Hey. No big deal. Live and learn. We have the State of Israel now. Progress!" Today, Germany is heading into recession with a much more diverse population, and the German economy is desperately dependent on exports at a time when the UK is trying to get out of the EU, and UK politicians--clearly bought off--are trying to do their level best to remain in a union that isn't democratic, while using all the rhetoric of democracy to undermine democracy. That's not to say that we won't be better off in the future. It is to say that we often find ourselves in horribly violent conflicts due to persistent mismanagement. When the masses decide that this mismanagement isn't a function of stupidity, but rather something done by design, they may "do some things" as Omar might put it.


Well, this is why nobody believes the establishment anymore. It's also why you can't beat Donald Trump with moral outrage in a society that unironically claims that homosexual marriage is a basic right in the US constitution. The establishment wants people to believe that homosexual marriage is a basic right, and that Donald Trump is immoral for banging a stripper and they cannot see the impossibility of such a position. They have no sense of irony, nor any sense of humor either. People like Mitt Romney lament the firing of John Bolton, but it doesn't occur to him that his own dalliance with war mongers was part of why he wasn't able to defeat an otherwise very beatable Obama.

Then again, perhaps he lost intentionally. That was my sneaking suspicious with Jeb Bush in 2016--that his objective was to lose gracefully.


The US will make it out of this debt bubble, but a lot of people will get squeezed in the process. People who cannot afford to buy a home are getting squeezed on rents in California. In some respects, it's creating a huge gap between those who can service debt and those who can't. I get credit card offers with balance transfers with a 3% fee and 0-1% for 12-18 months on unsecured debt. It's cheaper than my mortgage for unsecured debt. Granted, I have stellar credit. I frankly find it amazing that I can command such terms.


I'm GenX. Born in late 1967.


Well, outsourcing was a great way to kill stagflation. Wages are finally increasing a bit. Repatriating financial capital is helping (by cutting the corporate tax rate). Repatriating physical capital will help more--help the US more. It won't help other parts of the world.


Well, Japan and Germany have effectively negative interest rates. What do you call that?


If that were true. Kim working for himself in the US and an illegal immigrant doesn't pay half of his earnings to the IRS and state tax board as required by law. The opposition to illegal immigrants is all about wage depression--and that's why the chamber of commerce likes illegal immigration.


Most popular music today sucks. Part of it is quantizing and pitch correction and synthesizers replacing real musicians. Another part of it is that copyright law isn't respected since Napster came along. So who wants to fork out $500 to produce an album that's going to get downloaded for free? Nobody. China will ultimately kill innovation the way Napster and successors killed popular music. So allowing importers to bring in anything covered by patents from a country that doesn't respect intellectual property is probably a bad idea. The whole point of patents is to share ideas, but to give the inventor a significant profit during his/her/it lifetime. When we revert to trade secrets, innovation will slow.

So ultimately, China does need to have its wings clipped.

I work in open source software. We give it away for free. Software used to be a 90% gross margin business selling licenses. Now they are selling software as a service and platform as a service. Guess what has the biggest advantage? Software that is open source and free. It's cut throat. Free also produces innovation. Theft, however, usually doesn't. It will be interesting to see what happens with Huawei.


Generation:

Sry my bad, i just checked and i actually meant Gen X for you and mixed Gen Z and X between each other. I wasn't wrong though that you are late Gen Xer.(Its much easier to remember them when the groups actually have a name like boomers or millenials)

Negative interest rates:

I do not think that negative interest rates is a bad thing nor does it lead to 0 profits perhaps in some cases. I think that its more or less a technique to attempt to increase inflation and prevent banks/finance from going wild. Right now, nobody can afford defaltion and this is one of the tools that we can use to combat it. As I mentioned in some other topic, inflation is a curious thing:

1) Printing money, can cause inflation but usually it actually doesn't when we deal with stable economies (US, EU etc) We printed a buttload of money during the 2008 crysis but our currencies didn't really devalue that much. Printing money problem seems to be an issue of collapsing economies who have no trust in the first place.

2) Another way to stamp out defaltion is to increase wages which will invetiably lead to inflation in the long run. This is a very slow process so rarely used to fix deflation situations. Deflation in itself is also kinda a wage increase if it lasts for a long period of time but the difference with it is basically that Debt becomes much harder to maintain.

3) So if printing money will not produce inflation and deflation in itself is suicide because of our huge private debts then we need to use other means for inflation. Here i guess where interest rates come in. I mean, its possible to create inflation by damaging trust in your economy but no sane person will use this way.

Sure, its not perfect for banks but actually businesses who are not finance or banking do not care that much. If they export then it actually helps them. If they work internally again, it doesn't impact their profit margins that much. This causes some investment issues perhaps but i don't see it that apocalyptic.

The mistake that you are making is that you think Finance/Investment should make a killing of foreign investment. As George Friedman put it, well tough luck, Japanese and German economies were not made for foreign capital to profit. Might be bad for US capital but its okay situation for their local/common people. If you look at it that way, then Germany and Japan are perhaps the most stable countries right now from Trumpism/Brexit/etc. US, France, UK, Italy etc have problems with this insurgent right and left, some are already in power while in Germany and Japan they are still stable. Considering that Merkel fucked up a lot that is a great achievement of their systems. Same thing goes for Japan.

Immigration:

I was talking about legal immigration. Any variation of a system that i proposed must have strict immigration controls basically only legal migration of sorts preferable. If US, EU, Japan etc go to globalised between each other while cutting of India, China,Africa etc then it would increase immigration greatly which kinda beats the point. So long as the immigration is in the legal domain then what i said applies.

Innovation/Copyright things:

Why should a millenial worker care one way or the other. Its not like he will benefit from the copy rights being respected in China. Ultimately it is not his assets that are getting destroyed or devalued. Sure, it decentivises innovation BUT that doesn't mean that it will not happen at all. It perhaps decentivises moving patents to China or doing it in China but it does not decentivise innovation inside the US itself. It is a decently okay process for them. If China steals patents then US companies are a bit afraid to move important production lines to China which is a win. Its not like the US doesn't bann companies who make knock offs from selling inside the US.
User avatar
By Drlee
#15033301
So John. Question. Suppose I could borrow a large sum of money for my consulting business utilizing these absurdly low interest rates. Why would I not want to do that and let investment and inflation repay the loan? (Assuming they remain in balance.)

Maybe the frontrunners of the Democrats should dump trying to ban hamburgers and win back the blue collar working class vote. I hardly see how going into the 2020 election calling blue collar workers "fat" is going to be a winning formula. Then again, crazier things have happened. Trump is president!


From your mouth to God's ears. I repeat myself all to frequently when I assert that we ought not discount the propensity of Democrats to lose an election by alienating the fly-over states. That is what Biden is all about.

If I were Pelosi or the chairman of the DNC, I would take AOC and her cohort of newbies into the cloak room and have a come-to-Jesus meeting. I would tell them to STFU until after the election. I would tell them that the only time they can open their mouths is in support of the candidate's every talking point. I would take away the ability of the republicans to run against them as best I could. The fact of the matter is that Trump, et al, are going to run against AOC and her buddies and not whoever the democratic nominee is. And they absolutely should.
User avatar
By Julian658
#15033304
Drlee wrote:So John. Question. Suppose I could borrow a large sum of money for my consulting business utilizing these absurdly low interest rates. Why would I not want to do that and let investment and inflation repay the loan? (Assuming they remain in balance.)



From your mouth to God's ears. I repeat myself all to frequently when I assert that we ought not discount the propensity of Democrats to lose an election by alienating the fly-over states. That is what Biden is all about.

If I were Pelosi or the chairman of the DNC, I would take AOC and her cohort of newbies into the cloak room and have a come-to-Jesus meeting. I would tell them to STFU until after the election. I would tell them that the only time they can open their mouths is in support of the candidate's every talking point. I would take away the ability of the republicans to run against them as best I could. The fact of the matter is that Trump, et al, are going to run against AOC and her buddies and not whoever the democratic nominee is. And they absolutely should.


I am mostly a centrist with very liberal tendencies when it comes to social issues. I am a libertarian and could care less about the LGBTQIA issue. However, on economic issues the left is DEAD wrong and they preach false information to the folks that want a welfare state.

Sweden tried socialism in the 1970s and did incredibly bad. Today Sweden is a capitalist country that taxes everybody------ even the poor. They pay social programs with capitalism. Most dummies on the left including Bernie Sanders think that the Scandinavian countries are socialists. In fact Sweden even privatized their social security system and they have school vouchers for education. This has markedly improved education. They also privatized many services that were once in the domain of the state. People like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are as evil as Trump. Or maybe they truly think Scandinavia is socialist. People like AOC et al are retards that are driven by racial identity.
User avatar
By BigSteve
#15033305
blackjack21 wrote:Most popular music today sucks. Part of it is quantizing and pitch correction and synthesizers replacing real musicians. Another part of it is that copyright law isn't respected since Napster came along. So who wants to fork out $500 to produce an album that's going to get downloaded for free?


I worked in the music industry for 15 years and I'm here to tell you: If "real musicians" are producing the album, $500 won't even cover the catering bill...
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