How do we break society off the government teet?

[Matt1970]

The problem boils down to several factors, in no particular order.

(1.) An increasingly obscene amount of the wealth produced by our society is going into the pockets of the top 1% or 5%, which means that the bottom 99% or 95% is going to be poorer and thus more dependent on government assistance.

(2.) Bad international trade and immigration policies were implemented for the purpose of allowing the top 1% or 5% to maintain a larger percentage of workers' contribution to wealth production as profit. The result has been an economic phenomenon called Global Labor Arbitrage, which is basically a merger and averaging out of the U.S. economy and labor market (and thus standard of living and quality of life) with that of the poverty of the third world. (You can do the math.)

(3.) Population explosion has worsened Malthusian forces, which means that the relative prices of limited resources are higher than what they would be if we had a lower population. When 2X the population wants to use Y amount of land, the cost of those resources on Y amount of land is going to be much higher than it is if only 1X amount of people wanted to use it.

The causes of our nation's economic decline really aren't that difficult to understand, but Americans have been propagandized to believe in a free market religious dogma and to oppose big bad evil socialism and "big gubermint".

1. That will never change as long as only 25% of our workforce actually graduates college. You are warned when still in school that a college grad will make between 15 and 20K on average and yet we still have the drop out rates we do.

2. Thank NAFTA and other crappy trade agreements that were supposed to benefit US workers but ended up giving them the shaft.

3. Irrelivant in the US economy. We are no where near overcrowding.

 

[nehalem256]

1. That will never change as long as only 25% of our workforce actually graduates college. You are warned when still in school that a college grad will make between 15 and 20K on average and yet we still have the drop out rates we do.

2. Thank NAFTA and other crappy trade agreements that were supposed to benefit US workers but ended up giving them the shaft.

3. Irrelivant in the US economy. We are no where near overcrowding.

On (3). Its not about literal overcrowding. It is about competition for resources. The most obvious being oil. More American's means we need more oil, which means we either need to produce it from more expensive sources or import it. Either way means higher prices. High oil prices are not good for people's wealth.

 

[Bateluer]

Didn't read the previous 5 pages. But, in a nutshell, once people are on the Govt teet, its damn near impossible to get off it without a revolution. Likely with violence. And it takes decades to undo the damage that a nannystate society causes in its citizens.

 

[Pr0d1gy]

I just had a look at the budget for the county in which I live. The fact is that a whole lot of people have not working as a career. Making babies shouldn't be a job. Heaven knows I see a lot of that every day in the city I work. In fact Steeplerot earlier made an interesting comment. The work ethic for too many is don't. Let someone do it for you.

This is also known as The Sandusky Ideal. Both parents go to work, the kids get molested or abused by some chester and/or criminal.

 

[Steeplerot]

Didn't read the previous 5 pages. But, in a nutshell, once people are on the Govt teet, its damn near impossible to get off it without a revolution. Likely with violence. And it takes decades to undo the damage that a nannystate society causes in its citizens.

What _damage_ would this be? The damage of security between jobs? The damage of feeding a family in tough times?

Where do you all get this fantasy garbage from so disconnected from real life and the human condition?

It's like all of conservatism are a bunch of silver spoon fed morons with no touch of reality.

Whats sad is I know it's not true. Some people are just willingly gullible/ignorant and hear what fits their already assumed notion of the worst in people.

You all just make your personal character flaws/mental damages all the more obvious through your pathological pessimism of your fellow man. Do you all even realize how transparent it is?

 

[nehalem256]

What _damage_ would this be? The damage of security between jobs? The damage of feeding a family in tough times?

Where do you all get this fantasy garbage from so disconnected from real life and the human condition?

It's like all of conservatism are a bunch of silver spoon fed morons with no touch of reality.

Because most liberal programs are not about that. They are about bailing out people who make life choices that are inconsistent with reality.

 

[Steeplerot]

Because most liberal programs are not about that. They are about bailing out people who make life choices that are inconsistent with reality.

Hogwash, this is a justification the right uses to distract from your own flaws.

If you have no arguement whatsoever, make shit up about the other side.

Sad how out of touch you all are to have to resort to sociopath conspiracies instead of looking at yourselves.

You all have nothing, no answers, no real world results, just more conspiracy trafficking to enrich a few conservative blowhards -like the piped pipers of ignorance.

Wrapped up in a turd sandwich of paranoid conspiracy and tabloid outrage for ratings and a big victim trip.

The rats follow so willingly. Keep dancing comrade. You may get a clue one day about the real world.

You will not find it from where you are now though.

 

[Jhhnn]

1. That will never change as long as only 25% of our workforce actually graduates college. You are warned when still in school that a college grad will make between 15 and 20K on average and yet we still have the drop out rates we do.

More people graduating college just causes credentials inflation & wage suppression higher up the economic foodchain.

2. Thank NAFTA and other crappy trade agreements that were supposed to benefit US workers but ended up giving them the shaft.

It wasn't the law itself, but rather American capitalists doing the shafting, along with the acceptance of trickledown Reaganomic flimflam. When the answer was higher taxes on higher profits from offshoring & automation, we made 'em lower. When the answer to American job loss was more socialism, more redistribution of income, we settled for less. When the answer was to raise minimum wage, we let it stagnate. When the answer to increasingly complex & deceptive financial shenanigans was stronger regulation, we did just the opposite. When the govt needed money to serve the people, we didn't raise taxes- we borrowed the money from the rich instead, cut their taxes while we were at it.

Why is that? Because of the right wing libertopian pablum so eagerly accepted by many Americans. When capitalism was achieving higher & higher levels of organization & power at an international level, we rejected the only force that can possibly counter it- egalitarian democracy of the people, for the people, and by the people. Instead, we elected Republicans, the party of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich, over & over again.

The average middle class Rightie basically suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, worshipping their oppressors the same way the serfs romanticized & idolized their nobility.

 

[lotus503]

People on the government teet is a small contributor, business on the teet is the elephant is the room.

 

[UberNeuman]

Ah... if only the OP could understand how many feed off the "guv ment teat" ......

Everyone posting in this thread have fed off it - some have lingered on it - some do more with it...

But never mistake it - you and I are all part of it....

 

[nehalem256]

Hogwash, this is a justification the right uses to distract from your own flaws.

If you have no arguement whatsoever, make shit up about the other side.

Sad how out of touch you all are to have to resort to sociopath conspiracies instead of looking at yourselves.

You all have nothing, no answers, no real world results, just more conspiracy trafficking to enrich a few conservative blowhards -like the piped pipers of ignorance.

Wrapped up in a turd sandwich of paranoid conspiracy and tabloid outrage for ratings and a big victim trip.

The rats follow so willingly. Keep dancing comrade. You may get a clue one day about the real world.

You will not find it from where you are now though.

No it is complete truth. Which is why besides unemployment all other social programs are given to people whether they deserve support from the government or not.

 

[Matt1970]

More people graduating college just causes credentials inflation & wage suppression higher up the economic foodchain.



It wasn't the law itself, but rather American capitalists doing the shafting, along with the acceptance of trickledown Reaganomic flimflam. When the answer was higher taxes on higher profits from offshoring & automation, we made 'em lower. When the answer to American job loss was more socialism, more redistribution of income, we settled for less. When the answer was to raise minimum wage, we let it stagnate. When the answer to increasingly complex & deceptive financial shenanigans was stronger regulation, we did just the opposite. When the govt needed money to serve the people, we didn't raise taxes- we borrowed the money from the rich instead, cut their taxes while we were at it.

Why is that? Because of the right wing libertopian pablum so eagerly accepted by many Americans. When capitalism was achieving higher & higher levels of organization & power at an international level, we rejected the only force that can possibly counter it- egalitarian democracy of the people, for the people, and by the people. Instead, we elected Republicans, the party of the rich, for the rich, and by the rich, over & over again.

The average middle class Rightie basically suffers from Stockholm Syndrome, worshipping their oppressors the same way the serfs romanticized & idolized their nobility.

I already proved to you once that wages started to drop well before Reaganomics and Trickle Down went into effect. Right around the same time the massive flood of cheap imported crap hit the US.

 

[nehalem256]

I already proved to you once that wages started to drop well before Reaganomics and Trickle Down went into effect. Right around the same time the massive flood of cheap imported crap hit the US.

Actually Jhhnn himself posted a chart that showed that wage growth and economic growth decoupled in the 1970s.... and he claimd it was Reagan's fault

 

[lotus503]

I already proved to you once that wages started to drop well before Reaganomics and Trickle Down went into effect. Right around the same time the massive flood of cheap imported crap hit the US.

More to do with peak oil in the us actually. Reagan took a problem and made it worse.

 

[nehalem256]

More to do with peak oil in the us actually. Reagan took a problem and made it worse.

Actually if you look at personal wages it looks much more correlated with this graph, with the Internet bubble skewing things in the late 1990s.

And what do you know? But depressed wages is exactly what economics tells will happen if you increase the labor force.

 

[berzerker60]

More people graduating college just causes credentials inflation & wage suppression higher up the economic foodchain.

It might cause that, but that's not all it causes. A highly educated workforce is less good for the highly educated individual but much better for the economy. A highly-educated workforce attracts businesses and allows existing ones to operate more efficiently. You can go too far in this direction, for example Iceland's absurdist foray into international banking as a result of too many freely-offered MBAs and PhDs, but that's very rare and far from our problem.

Of course, we should be steering a lot more people into trade schools, engineering fields, and other in-demand areas rather than encouraging the 'discovery yourself and learn whatever, it's all equally good' mindset. There's a hell of a lot to be gained by learning whatever suits your interests and talents, and on average you'll still do much better than without a college degree, but it's also simply true that an engineer (of most specialties) has a much better career trajectory than a Latino Studies major. (Careers aren't everything, and I'm not suggesting cutting area studies, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do more to educate on the practical implications of these choices).

Then there's the whole issue of paying for it, what with college tuition and student debt being among the biggest challenges facing the nation in a 50-year time scale.

 

[Jhhnn]

Actually Jhhnn himself posted a chart that showed that wage growth and economic growth decoupled in the 1970s.... and he claimd it was Reagan's fault

This graph-

http://lanekenworthy.net/2012/03/11/is-decoupling-real/

Whatever decoupling that occurred in the 1970's was minor, and made more profound by Reaganomics, which is still the way we operate today.

It's not like Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton were any sort of New Dealers, either. Carter deregulated transportation & telecom, while Clinton oversaw deregulation of finance & expanded globalization-

in 2000 Clinton worked with Republicans to give China entry into WTO and "most favored nation" trading status (i.e., low tariffs). NAFTA and WTO advocates promoted an optimistic vision of the future, with prosperity to be based on intellectuals skills and managerial know-how more than on routine hand labor. They promised that free trade meant lower prices for consumers. Opposition to liberalized trade came increasingly from labor unions, who argued that this system also meant lower wages and fewer jobs for American workers who could not compete against wages of less than a dollar an hour. The shrinking size and diminished political clout of these unions repeatedly left them on the losing side.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history#Post_World_War_II

The effects of all of that have been softened by the Welfare State & deregulation of Finance, enabling the over extension of credit seen in the S&L crisis, the LTCM fiasco of 1998, and the boom/bust of the Ownership Society.

Unions, regulations, subsidies, progressive taxes & tariffs all served as mechanisms of stabilization & redistribution within the American economy, facilitating the middle class as we know it. In casting those aside, we have enabled explosive inequality & a weakening of the economy itself in the process. We've substituted credit for wages & income as a masking mechanism, and we're now reaching the limits of that.