Really? Are you sure about this? I think you'd better go back and look at the per-capita personal income figures and how they have grown even in just the last 50 years (never mind the last 250). If laid-off factory workers are becoming burger flippers in such large numbers, then why does the average income of American family keep *rising*? Why is the percentage of Americans who are poor keep *declining*? You are the one grinding the theoretical axe here. The data of the past couple generations well supports my contention that free markets make the "average" family's wealth go up - not down. The fact that there are always some people at the bottom of the economic ladder who really struggle does not change the Big Picture...
Aintcha got that backwards, Dan? Seems most "activists" don't do anything
*but* talk.
-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)
For a copy of my TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter, send email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.
I don't know. But the debate here is about larger economic policy. Looking at some short period of time is never particularly instructive. Making policy based on last week's individual circumstances would be insane. My point is merely that free markets, in the Big Picture, have been good for us all, notwithstanding the momentary problems of particular individuals.
I have been quiet for a while because, well, I had other things more pressing to do other than be on the internet but...
1.) I agree we middle-class have created our own problem. We all got used to something that was unnatural: double-digit growth on our money. I think the 90's skewed everything for everybody. I talk to my mother and grandmother (who recently died at 99) and when they thought of 'growth' they thought 4-5-6--NOT 14-15-16% growth. Now we have people who would have never thought of buying stocks jump into the stock markt via mutual funds.
And we see where we are: we want double-digit growth but ALSO no lay-off AND no environmental problems AND free health benefits AND...well, you get the picture.
So, in part, I agree with you. I am not as unagreeable as you may think.
You say to talk to you since you have worked with outsourcing companies. Are you saying I didn't and don't? I do--please read what I wrote a long while back.
You are saying that things like sales and marketing and such stay behind. What in the heck are you saying? Everybody in this country is supposed to go into marketing? Sales? I agree with what some of the other guys said: Just who are you going to sell to when nobody has a job?
Oh, yeah, I forgot. Our median income has risen in the past 50 years. Hmmm...could that be because of the terrible inflation in the 70s and early 80s? COuld it be because women have gone back to work en force? Could it be because couples have 1 1/2 jobs a peiece nowadays?
Where is our free time? My father had a LOT more free time 30 years ago when I was a 13-year-old kid. I put in a lot more hours now.
Oh, yeah, get education. Where? In what?
You say that us stinking Americans think we need to get paid too much for certain jobs. You bet! When you put tens of thousands of dollars into a college education, you need to get some return on value. Geez.
I hear what you say about me sounding rasict but I am not. I have many friends from India, Russia, Bulgaria. I think I mentioned that before but, of course, that gets forgotten--but the racist card is played real fast.
You keep saying that the bottom has never fallen out of this society. Does that mean it NEVER will? Does that mean we don't need to fight for what we have?
I say these outsourcing people ARE stealing our jobs. Listen, they can never, EVER perform the job without raping us--we need to teach them. Then they do, in the cases I see, a horrible job. These so-called experts are about as well-versed as a kid out of high school. Sorry. I know some of them are good--I work with them. They took a chance, moved over here, worked from the bottom up, and (like you) chose to stay here. Buy a house. Send the kids to school. Put back into this country.
I have a HUGE problem with us teaching these people. Oh, I forgot: that is fair. Right. Why don't the corporate CEOs ask the employees if they would accept an across the board paycut in order to save as many jobs as they can? Why do these jobs need to go to H1Bs they ship into this country?
I have to agree: you are a very smart fellow. And everything you say is true--from a book sense.
I think this countey is going to hell in a hand basket and all this global-schmobal crap is speeding things up.
I think we will have the best educated burger flippers in the world here pretty soon.
And so you know: I do not live in an extravagent house. I drive cheap little cars. I do what I can to live within my means. Actually, a lot of what you are seeing in this country is a facade. I believe most of us live WAY above our means.
Geesh, this thing has gone way off-topic. Let's just say if (and when) they come to me at my place of employment and tell me to teach "Sunil" my job, I will tell "Sunil" and the person who told me to kiss my ass.
In order to be totally off topic, does anyone know where one can find a fairly short description of what the heck CMM and it's levels involve. My bosses boss, just announced in a meeting last week that he wans us to obtain CMM level 4 certification by the end of next year. Nobody said anything at the time because frankly, nobody knew if he was serious.
Was pretty uncommon just a few decades ago for the average American to have much of a stock portfolio. They didn't need it since they were loyal to their employers and the employers offered incentive to stay and retire with a decent pension. That's long gone - now it seems everyone's just out for themselves at the expense of others.
To hell with supporting the local business so your neighbor can keep his house decent. To hell with supporting your employees and making sure they have a decent wage and benefits. To hell with not pilfering company supplies and keeping personal errands to non-working hours. To hell with giving up personal luxuries rather than sacrificing *anything* for the common good. We have become a selfish and rude society.
There's a story I heard growing up about my Dad's mom. During the Depression she worked as a school teacher, my granddad was an inspector for the Bureau of Mines - they lived in Rochester, Illinois. She would leave a loaf of bread and butter on the kitchen table and the back door would be unlocked. Anyone coming by looking for work, food or assistance would be welcome to come in and share in what they had to offer. Apparently it didn't matter that they could have been robbed blind - her generosity and willingness to help others was graciously accepted and in turn their house and possessions were left untouched.
Do such gestures exist today? Would those who are in need be as respectful? I suspect, that for a majority of Americans, not.
No. I was merely responding to the broadbrush of "everything" being outsourced.
Please cite a single example in ALL of US history from Jamestown through today any sustained situation where "nobody has a job". Your position is both based on hyperbole and is at complete odds with reality. While there has been local displacement of jobs throughout US economic history, it has also always been _temporal_.
This is ridiculous. The average *actual buying power* of the working American (that's inflation/tax and all the rest of it figured in) has grown consistently in this nation. Moreover, that buying power today buys better and more reliable products than ever in pretty much every category of things consumers buy. IOW, we the sheeple are much wealthier *in real terms* than any generation before us.
You have *got* to be kidding, right? From Jamestown through about the middle of the 19th Century, the dominant occupation in this country was in agribusiness. I promise you, that those old farmers (and the new ones) put in a whole lot more hours on average than you (or I) ever will. Moreover, the average amount of "free time" across this nation - this means hours available to you after you have worked enough to take care of yourself - has gone *UP* consistently over the past century. This is primarily due to higher and higher levels of invention and technology in our lives. The reason there are so many (bad) cable TV stations today, for instance, is that there is so much more demand by consumers to be entertained - THEY HAVE MORE TIME TO FILL.
The fact that you have less free time than your father is anecdotal and irrelevant to the larger disussion here. It could be that you're more ambitious than he was. It could be that your not as competent and have to work harder than he did to keep up. It could be that your profession necessarily requires more hours than his did. But none of this speaks to what is going on in the larger society. Do some Google research. Modern American citizens, on average, have more free time than ever. Yet another benefit of market economies.
You have *got* to be kidding. The educational system in this country has fed at the tax trough for over 100 years. There is a vast nationwide system of schools at all levels from kindergarden through Ph.D. available to almost anyone with heartbeat or better. Anyone in this country who does not get an education is in one of a very few categories: 1) They don't want an education, 2) They aren't trying to get one all that hard, or 3) They are profoundly handicapped and are unable to learn at all (a very small percentage of the population).
Before you lecture me about how much it costs ... I came from a poor family - today it would be called "working poor". I went to _private_ universities without a single loan, grant, or government handout from undergrad through Ph.D. studies (which I did not complete). I worked for an education and I got one. If you want an education in this country, you can get one. Period.
"In what?" In learning to think for yourself. Then, learning how to teach yourself new things the rest of your life. Education should not first be a place you learn a job - that's for vocational school or post graduate work. Undergrad education, especially, should be a place that exposes you to great thinkers, human history, and critical thinking. If this was done more, these threads would disappear and I (the poor immigrant here) wouldn't have to defend market economics (to what I presume to be Western-born citizens).
In Marxist economic theory, they use what is called the "Labor Theory" of value. That is, something's value is based on what it _cost_ to make. Unfortunately, this does not work AT ALL as every single Marxist economy in the 20th Century discovered. If I am a slow carpenter, and it takes me twice as long to build a house as you, my house is not worth twice as much. Well, the same thing applies to your theory about pay and cost of education. What you paid for your education is irrelvant (in market terms) to the rest of us. You are only worth what an employer (or customer) is willing to pay for your services. Marxist value theories do not work. If you want more pay, become more valuable to your employer/customer.
I said your _position_ was implicitly racist, not that you were ... and I was pretty clear about this.
I do not spend my life planning for everything to go to hell in a handbasket. "Could" it? Sure. But it is really, really, unlikely. Of course you should fight for what you have. But you are targeting the wrong enemy. Your enemy is not outsourcing, global trade, or market economies. Your enemy is *change*. The whole world is changing. It always has, its just doing it faster and faster. If you choose to adapt to change, you survive. If you cling to "the way things were" and scapegoat things like globalization, outsourcing, and market economies, you become economically irrelevant.
I have had to change my profession two times in the first 25 years of my career. I am about to have to do it again to stay relevant to this once-again changing business landscape. It's not easy, but it is necessary.
How is it "your" job. A job goes to whomever can do it best (as perceived by the employer) for the least amount. No one owns a job, they earn it - over and over, every day. You want something that is not yours to keep to remain unconditionally in your possession without regard to marketplace realities. THAT is a theoretical fairytale.
Suppose I come to your town as a fellow-American citizen and tell your boss I have NO job and I'll do yours for half what he pays you. Am I "raping" you (what an ugly word to use in this context)? Or is it just them "furriners" that are the rapists?
No. Everything I say has been consistently defended with the actual record of American economic history. At no point have I trotted out some theoretical precept without giving specific examples of how Reality supports the theory. The only thing I have not given is specific citations for the actual raw data and studies because this is not a research paper and it will do you oodles of good to dig it out for yourself.
Good. Then let's test YOUR theory. Why don't you take YOUR money and start a company. Maybe you could mortgage YOUR house and borrow money from YOUR friends and family. Make sure to only hire Americans and pay them all, every one, a "good living wage" with plenty of benefits like retirement programs, medical coverage, life insurance, day care, and so forth. You're not allowed to lay anyone off no matter how poorly the business does. You're not allowed to reduce salaries. In fact, you have to maintain your "living wage" consistent with the inflationary growth rate. At no point are you permitted to hire foreigners who would "rape" your poor employees out of "their" jobs.
Do that for a few years and get back to me on how strongly you feel about all this. Talk is cheap when you collect a salary and don't have to worry about the jobs of hundreds or thousands of other people. Try being the boss for a while - your perspective will change dramatically.
"Reality" is that which remains after our theories have disappeared. It makes very little difference to the Universe how you "feel" about things. Money, economics and all that goes with that operate on a set of principles that transcend legislation, opinion, and even force. The USSR spent 80 years trying to force Marxist economic ideas to work, up to and including the use of violence, and they failed miserably. In an analogous manner, if you insist on clinging to your views of how money and the workplace operate, you too will fail miserably. Gladly, this is not inevitable. You can decide to cooperate with Reality or fight it. You choose and get results accordingly.
Oh, I dunno. My mother was an RN, did most of the raising of 3 kids herself. When we were finally out of the house and as settled as we'd ever get, she sort of took on her career, ended up running a small hospital in Westchester County. She busted her tail for that place, helped to raise a large percentage of the bucks to build a new hospital, worked many more hours than she ever could have been paid for, to all accounts did a superb job.
She managed to build up a decent amount of money in mutal funds, starting in the late '50s.
She retired at, IIRC, 68. Yeah. By the time she was 70, the hospital had backed out of paying for her bridge health insurance.
Loyalty from employers? Never has existed. The facade has. The reality not.
Pilfering from employer stocks has been a problem in every office I've worked in, going back to the '60s. It probably has been a problem since office supplies were invented.
Whole different era, though there are still places you can sleep with your doors open. Not many any more, but a few.
No, but in the past 40-45 years, Americans have been conditioned to think they are owed help, and get visibly angry when it's refused. Or many do. Not all, of course. Too, the depth of need that existed during the Great Depression was often similar to the milder forms of need we find today in Third World countries. Very little of that exists today. And, in addition, I don't think we had anything like the drug culture we have today. Crackheads didn't roam large areas of the cities and suburbs and Oxy whatever wasn't even a pipe dream.
Charlie Self "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." Napoleon Bonaparte
Speaking of irrelevant, he asks about 30 years ago and you tell him about a century ago. Spare time for many has disappeared in the appalling need for more. People have so many wants that both partners work full time to pay for the second SUV, the Alaskan vacation (sorry, Luigi: I realize it's only a driveto a similar spot for you), the 2800 square foot house (a real joy after the kids leave home), the acre or larger lot and on and on and on.
You can promise all you want, by the by, but farmers' hours are pretty much defined by the type of farming done. Some types of farming do not require much more time at the desk and in the field than do your normal commuters' jobs (especially when that daily 90 minutes on the road is added in).
Jeez. I do love that type of argument. Anything that doesn't fit your conclusion is anecdotal and irrelevant. You live on statistics, which chose one at a time, prove particular points. If I weren't so lazy, I'd pick up stats that prove just about the opposite, when I select my points.
Charlie Self "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." Napoleon Bonaparte
The fact that you have less free time than your father is anecdotal
No, anything that does not conform to observed Reality is wrong. The fact that one person has less free time today, or even a thousand people do, is "irrelevant" to understanding what is going on in the overall picture ... until it is studied formally, rigorously, and using properly selected test samples.
Statistics is not the voodoo most people think. You can't just go "find" statistics that support your position. Well, you can't do so honestly anyway. The variability in understanding the meaning of statistics comes not from the discipline itself. It comes from people poorly schooled in that field or with a political axe to grind coming to conclusions from statistical results they don't understand. Popular culture is full of myths because some Talking Hairdo on "The News" misrepresented some statistical study. One particular example is the one we see here: The popular (but wrong) notion that we have "less free time" than ever.
The argument is "irrelevant" in the sense that it is anecdotal, a comparison involving only 2 people, and given no context. It is certainly relevant to the persons who experienced the working conditions described. But my posts and responses have been in context of the larger picture of the American economy. I don't "live on statistics", I live in Reality. that Reality has compellingly demonstrated the efficacy of market economies and the average increase in spare time that such economies bring to our society. I specifically have NOT picked selected statistics but rather argued from a macro-level view of the subject.
Have some people experienced less free time in this society? Sure. But some also have far greater free time. (There are far more multi-millionaires per capita today than ever, who presumably have all the free time on their hands they want - they only work if they want to.) Neither of these points, in and of themselves, speaks to the larger picture. What does, is what has happened to the *average* over, say, the past several generations of Americans. That is to say, it has gone _up_.
This whole thread is troublesome to me, and I have spent time responding, because there is a lot of argument in the form of, "I had a bad experience, so it must generalize to the larger population" even when there is pretty clear evidence that the argument is false. The simple fact is that the average condition of today's citizens is demonstrably better than ever. We are the wealthiest generation of Americans ever. We have more free time than ever. That the quality of goods and services available for our purchases is higher than ever. We live longer than ever. The environment is cleaner than it has ever been since the onset of the Industrial Revolution (and improving). But there is the cussed human streak that wants to believe everything is constantly getting worse (a topic considered in some depth by Julian Simon in "Hoodwinking The Nation").
The experiences of particular individuals speaks only to _their_ circumstances. The whole point of the Scientific Method is to remove individual bias when trying to reach general conclusions. It is entirely true that some people have had a really rough time in the past few years as markets have globalized and work forces have become fluid across international boundaries. But this simply does not speak to the "general direction" things are headed. It's like saying, "My new Chevy is a piece of crap, so all Chevys are crap." - one of the oldest logical fallacies in the book.
I cannot recommend Simon's book highly enough. He was both a professional economist who could write clearly for the layman, and someone who was interested in this whole phenomenon of the human need to believe in increasing disaster. Its a great read and I could never begin to do justice to these topics as well as he did.
Now that part's true, but it still doesn't answer the guy like me who bought a new Dodge a few years ago, found it had 2 problems, neither of which the dealer corrected...while stating that he couldn't replicate one and that the other was something that "happened" in all that particular model.
It doesn't have to represent ALL Dodge cars or trucks, but you can bet that the next vehicle I buy will not be built by Daimler-Chrysler.
Charlie Self "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." Napoleon Bonaparte
Security wise yes, but following your earlier arguments, allowing unlimited numbers of immigrants would be a win-win.
Sounds more like religion than economics. I personally doubt that the occupations are in most cases work than no other American actually wants to do.
It is
Could not survive? Wouldn't they adjust to the market? Sounds like gloom and doom.
You constantly assume that outsourcing is purely market driven. Bad assumption.
Lots of immigrants involved in skilled labor.
Minimum wage is a massive non-issue. Its a good indicator that the criticism is religious rather than economic.
A long term plan for personal power?
The plot thickens...
I thought it was the constitution.
What about the rule of law? You sound like the mommy government types who want to "send a message." Doesn't sound like any classical liberal I have ever read, including Adam Smith. Since you've annointed him as the "Father of Economics," perhaps you'll reveal why he is wrong (along with dopey guys like T. Jefferson.
They said that about locking up pot smokers... actually they say that about near every damn thing when they want to shoot or cage someone who is viewed as an evildoer or part of a "problem."
Everyone, everywhere in America who has been alive long enough is an illegal. Immigrants are the same.
Besides, appeals are part of the process to determine more definitely that illegality exists.
There you go. You just outed yourself. Virtually all of the people who want to move here are prohibited from becoming citizens. Rather than deal with the issue, you foul the discussion with an attack that they "refuse" to become citizens.
Are you really an immigrant or is that added for effect?
Sounds like you don't know what civil laws are or their relationship to crime and criminal statutes or to the justice system as a whole.
Mmmmmm... good stuff, so someone like Bill Frist whose corporation operated on people when they didn't need it could use these people for medical experiments or perhaps just amusement and poor Jose's family would have no redress.
Not only is it completely impractical, but it would shove it up the ass of every citizen who travels overseas.
All right. Food, shelter, and medical treatment.
So immigrants and American parents generally are shitty parents. OK.
And you want to shoot immigrants for not providing their identity papers quickly and eliminate the rule of law. You sound a bit like an admirer of Stalin to me.
|Owen Lowe writes: | |>Was pretty uncommon just a few decades ago for the average American to |>have much of a stock portfolio. They didn't need it since they were |>loyal to their employers and the employers offered incentive to stay and |>retire with a decent pension. That's long gone - now it seems everyone's |>just out for themselves at the expense of others. | |Oh, I dunno. My mother was an RN, did most of the raising of 3 kids herself. |When we were finally out of the house and as settled as we'd ever get, she sort |of took on her career, ended up running a small hospital in Westchester County. |She busted her tail for that place, helped to raise a large percentage of the |bucks to build a new hospital, worked many more hours than she ever could have |been paid for, to all accounts did a superb job. | |She managed to build up a decent amount of money in mutal funds, starting in |the late '50s. |
Aren't moms great?
When my parents divorced in the late fifties, my mom took a job as a nurse's aid in a TB sanitorium, emptying bed pans and all those other fun things, not to mention running the constant risk of catching the disease herself. She worked the 11 to 7 shift so she could be home during the day with us kids. No aid to dependent children, no food stamps, no free day care or health care. No newspaper sob stories about how bad she has it, etc. etc.....
I believe that this is one of those jobs that illegals take today because, "No American will work for those wages."
Didn't seem to harm her; she's 90 and still going pretty strong.
|She retired at, IIRC, 68. Yeah. By the time she was 70, the hospital had backed |out of paying for her bridge health insurance.
Yep. I worked for Hughes Aircraft for 30 years, during every one of which, I was promised that if I took qualified early retirement, my medical insurance would be company-paid until I qualified for Medicare.
I did and Raytheon, the successor company, doesn't. The sorry part is that the projected costs of these benefits was built into the contracts. We taxpayers paid for them when the contracts were executed. So not only did I get screwed, so did you. The company basically charged the government for something they didn't provide. In most circles this is called *theft* or *fraud*. Everyone who thinks the government gives a shit please raise your hand.
[snip] | |Whole different era, though there are still places you can sleep with your |doors open. Not many any more, but a few.
I visited a cousin in northern MN a couple of summers ago. His house doesn't even have a lock and the keys are in his PU parked on the street. This will all change when the illegal aliens get there.
Buying a Toyota or Honda car is just as good as buying American because the Car's are for the most built in the USA or by our great neighbors to the North. My wifes Odyssey is built in Ontario Canada and it a great vehicle. Why is it that Honda's or Toyotas are solidy and rank at the top in Quality?
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