Economic Vampirism--how the boomers are robbing GenX (and Millenials)

[Kinser79]

An interesting take on how one generation is seeking to drain other generations so they can hopefully coast to retirement before civilization collapses.

[Galen]

(05-13-2016, 06:31 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Lots of Boomers don't have a pot to pee in as they retire / burn out / get pushed out of the work force.

As Peter Schiff has pointed out multiple times they are showing up in many of the new low paying jobs which is pushing out many entry level job seekers.  The Boomers did not plan because they assumed what was would always be in spite of the job they did wrecking everything.

[Odin]

(05-17-2016, 04:51 AM)taramarie Wrote: Here in NZ, it was not possible for my mother to go out and work as there is a law stating that a child cannot be unsupervised until 16.

I know I've said it before, but that is fucking ridiculous.

[Bronco80]

(05-17-2016, 07:31 AM)Odin Wrote:

(05-17-2016, 04:51 AM)taramarie Wrote: Here in NZ, it was not possible for my mother to go out and work as there is a law stating that a child cannot be unsupervised until 16.

I know I've said it before, but that is fucking ridiculous.

Hopefully we're approaching the peak of this ridicule as Xers should also be at the peak of parenthood.

[pbrower2a]

(05-17-2016, 04:51 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(05-14-2016, 04:34 AM)Galen Wrote:

(05-13-2016, 06:31 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Lots of Boomers don't have a pot to pee in as they retire / burn out / get pushed out of the work force.

As Peter Schiff has pointed out multiple times they are showing up in many of the new low paying jobs which is pushing out many entry level job seekers.  The Boomers did not plan because they assumed what was would always be in spite of the job they did wrecking everything.

Also some were single parents. Here in NZ, it was not possible for my mother to go out and work as there is a law stating that a child cannot be unsupervised until 16. So she could not go out and work. But even then when i hit 16 she should have planned for her retirement and for funeral costs. She has not planned for either and overspent which has hurt my future as i am left cleaning up her mess. I do not know the circumstances for single parents in America back when boomers were with little ones but I am sure it could have hurt their pocket much more than if they were with someone. But we cannot entirely blame the break up of families on boomers....the silents i hear started that trend and i can see why after listening to a boomer on the situation of GI's who stuck together. It was an eye opener.

Women are basically told to go back to work as soon as possible -- so go sling hash, run the cash register at the box store, make beds at the motel... it's as if we get the worst results possible in view of such prosperity as we have. Some prosperity!

The US has the flimsiest welfare state in the advanced industrial West. Unless you wish to call Brazil an advanced industrial society, America is the last such country to have abolished slavery, and after emancipating the slaves the property-owners of the South made sure that the ex-slaves had to endure a new form of serfdom that was also imposed upon poor white people. There is welfare, but one must be really messed up to use it.

We have people who weigh 400 pounds or more -- they are disabled due to their weight.

[Kinser79]

(05-18-2016, 01:14 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Lots of empty nests are increasingly occupied by aging Xers.

And some aging Xers are finding that they can more easily obtain the space needed for their children, and look after their aging boomer parents by moving back in. On the old forum I mentioned that I felt the extended family (the most natural form of social organization for humans) was making a come back because the nuclear family was an annomaly created by a specific set of social policies--policies that are unsustainable.

[beechnut79]

(05-13-2016, 06:31 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Well they are evaporating from most work places. Retirements in large numbers. It took a while but it's finally happening. Meanwhile I'm seeing more and more Milles, as expected.

In truth, for every Boomer who was a Yuppie and did well, there are numerous Blue Collar ones who got screwed starting in the late 80s and early 90s when the obsession with cost reduction and outsourcing kicked in. Lots of Boomers don't have a pot to pee in as they retire / burn out / get pushed out of the work force.

Yet on the flip side there are more people continuing to work beyond age 65 than ever before. I am now 71 and am trying desperately to remain in the work force. One of the problems I have found stems from the fact that when I started out the workplace was still more benign and less cutthroat than today, and I have difficulty putting up with the mean spirited attitude in vogue these days, not to mention the sped-up pace of life in general.

[beechnut79]

(05-14-2016, 04:34 AM)Galen Wrote:

(05-13-2016, 06:31 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Lots of Boomers don't have a pot to pee in as they retire / burn out / get pushed out of the work force.

As Peter Schiff has pointed out multiple times they are showing up in many of the new low paying jobs which is pushing out many entry level job seekers.  The Boomers did not plan because they assumed what was would always be in spite of the job they did wrecking everything.

You mean like the idea that if you got in a job in a good company and did everything you were supposed to do, you were most often set for life? And usually you only got fired if you did something pretty awful, and even if that did happen, you usually could recover more quickly than is the case today? And everything you did was not tracked so heavily like it is now? And before the days when office politics and political correctness trumped reason?

[Galen]

(05-22-2016, 03:03 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: You mean like the idea that if you got in a job in a good company and did everything you were supposed to do, you were most often set for life? And usually you only got fired if you did something pretty awful, and even if that did happen, you usually could recover more quickly than is the case today? And everything you did was not tracked so heavily like it is now? And before the days when office politics and political correctness trumped reason?

Pretty much.

This process was well underway in the mid-eighties when I started working.  This sort of crap tended to come from over eager Boomer middle management.  Welcome to my world as it has always been.  This too will probably pass but too late to do me any good.

[beechnut79]

(05-13-2016, 06:31 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Well they are evaporating from most work places. Retirements in large numbers. It took a while but it's finally happening. Meanwhile I'm seeing more and more Milles, as expected.

In truth, for every Boomer who was a Yuppie and did well, there are numerous Blue Collar ones who got screwed starting in the late 80s and early 90s when the obsession with cost reduction and outsourcing kicked in. Lots of Boomers don't have a pot to pee in as they retire / burn out / get pushed out of the work force.

That is me although I am trying to get by as best I can on Social Security. I was blessed with a condition which today is commonly referred to as Asperger's Syndrome, a condition largely characterized by social awkwardness. In a work environment where office politics and political correctness trump reason, one with AS seems to have two strikes on him/her before even getting to the plate. Some of the stories about combating the condition should be saved for late October as part of Halloween ghost stories. We are probably the last to gain parity which has now been afforded people of color and more recently gays and transgendered.

[beechnut79]

(05-14-2016, 04:34 AM)Galen Wrote:

(05-13-2016, 06:31 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Lots of Boomers don't have a pot to pee in as they retire / burn out / get pushed out of the work force.

As Peter Schiff has pointed out multiple times they are showing up in many of the new low paying jobs which is pushing out many entry level job seekers.  The Boomers did not plan because they assumed what was would always be in spite of the job they did wrecking everything.

This is no doubt what many GI parents, including my own, pushed onto us. I probably disappointed my parents because I didn't end up with a cushy corporate job for 30+ years which seemed to be the norm in those days. It wasn't until shortly before they died during the late 1990s that they finally realized that for the most part that kind of security was no longer possible. Do you all feel as if the days or widespread unionism and workplace solidarity are gone forever?

[beechnut79]

(05-22-2016, 09:59 PM)Galen Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 03:03 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: You mean like the idea that if you got in a job in a good company and did everything you were supposed to do, you were most often set for life? And usually you only got fired if you did something pretty awful, and even if that did happen, you usually could recover more quickly than is the case today? And everything you did was not tracked so heavily like it is now? And before the days when office politics and political correctness trumped reason?

Pretty much.

This process was well underway in the mid-eighties when I started working.  This sort of crap tended to come from over eager Boomer middle management.  Welcome to my world as it has always been.  This too will probably pass but too late to do me any good.

It's been slow in passing, and today seems to be even worse than it was at that time. Will probably not pass until the vast majority gets fed up enough to take to the streets. Most now are too self-absorbed to do so. It began on a small scale with the "Fight for 15" crusade along with the Occupy thing.

[Galen]

(06-13-2016, 07:52 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 09:59 PM)Galen Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 03:03 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: You mean like the idea that if you got in a job in a good company and did everything you were supposed to do, you were most often set for life? And usually you only got fired if you did something pretty awful, and even if that did happen, you usually could recover more quickly than is the case today? And everything you did was not tracked so heavily like it is now? And before the days when office politics and political correctness trumped reason?

Pretty much.

This process was well underway in the mid-eighties when I started working.  This sort of crap tended to come from over eager Boomer middle management.  Welcome to my world as it has always been.  This too will probably pass but too late to do me any good.

It's been slow in passing, and today seems to be even worse than it was at that time. Will probably not pass until the vast majority gets fed up enough to take to the streets. Most now are too self-absorbed to do so. It began on a small scale with the "Fight for 15" crusade along with the Occupy thing.

I would expect that increasing the minimum wage will cause many more low skilled jobs to be automated away.  It seems unlikely that unions will make much of a comeback under those conditions.

[pbrower2a]

(06-13-2016, 11:54 PM)Galen Wrote:

(06-13-2016, 07:52 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 09:59 PM)Galen Wrote:

(05-22-2016, 03:03 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: You mean like the idea that if you got in a job in a good company and did everything you were supposed to do, you were most often set for life? And usually you only got fired if you did something pretty awful, and even if that did happen, you usually could recover more quickly than is the case today? And everything you did was not tracked so heavily like it is now? And before the days when office politics and political correctness trumped reason?

Pretty much.

This process was well underway in the mid-eighties when I started working.  This sort of crap tended to come from over eager Boomer middle management.  Welcome to my world as it has always been.  This too will probably pass but too late to do me any good.

It's been slow in passing, and today seems to be even worse than it was at that time. Will probably not pass until the vast majority gets fed up enough to take to the streets. Most now are too self-absorbed to do so. It began on a small scale with the "Fight for 15" crusade along with the Occupy thing.

I would expect that increasing the minimum wage will cause many more low skilled jobs to be automated away.  It seems unlikely that unions will make much of a comeback under those conditions.

Low-skilled manufacturing and even service jobs are being automated out of existence as soon as a machine or a computer program can be found to replace them. So it is for welding and painting on assembly lines for vehicles and appliances; so it is becoming for counter people in fast-food places. Finding people who can show delight in working for a near-minimum wage despite a miserable life off the job (poverty is incompatible with human happiness) is far tougher than it seems.

The model for employment could easily become that of energy production: the productive sector creates relatively few well-paid jobs and a huge flow of income for owners and an administrative elite. Governments having few other streams of income to tax effectively will tax machine-based production heavily and spread the income as the politics allow. Thus graft (Venezuela) that creates an economic nightmare or show projects and missionary efforts (Saudi Arabia). A Venezuelan official once called petroleum la mierda del diablo -- the shit of the Devil -- for the effects of an economy based upon the extraction of oil as a source of income. The costs of energy production are real, yet the revenue of oil production do not spread to the People.

So it could be with a heavily-automated activity that creates a huge stream of revenue but few jobs. Even traditional peasant-based farming might have been more capable of solving the connection between toil and pay than the post-modern models of economic production.

[Galen]

(06-14-2016, 02:33 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Low-skilled manufacturing and even service jobs are being automated out of existence as soon as a machine or a computer program can be found to replace them. So it is for welding and painting on assembly lines for vehicles and appliances; so it is becoming for counter people in fast-food places. Finding people who can show delight in working for a near-minimum wage despite a miserable life off the job (poverty is incompatible with human happiness) is far tougher than it seems.

Wages aren't the only thing that raises the cost of hiring people but also government regulations that push up the costs and increase the risk of lawsuits.  This combination of things is making the upfront cost of capital for the machines versus the cost of people is what is driving this trend.

[pbrower2a]

(06-14-2016, 02:41 AM)Galen Wrote:

(06-14-2016, 02:33 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Low-skilled manufacturing and even service jobs are being automated out of existence as soon as a machine or a computer program can be found to replace them. So it is for welding and painting on assembly lines for vehicles and appliances; so it is becoming for counter people in fast-food places. Finding people who can show delight in working for a near-minimum wage despite a miserable life off the job (poverty is incompatible with human happiness) is far tougher than it seems.

Wages aren't the only thing that raises the cost of hiring people but also government regulations that push up the costs and increase the risk of lawsuits.  This combination of things is making the upfront cost of capital for the machines versus the cost of people is what is driving this trend.

Prospective employers typically ask about outside organizations in which one participates (but those practically identifying a religion are exempt, so membership in the Westboro Baptist Church is unlikely to be a bar against employment as might be membership in the Communist Party of the USA. Show any sympathy for unions and you can be fired in many places. Even membership in an organization associated with a time-consuming hobby (be an amateur astronomer, and such might keep one from getting work with a company that might ask one to work at night) might be an effective bar, let alone membership in the NAACP. Prospective employers can check credit records and histories of lawsuits; people who have made lawsuits might do so against an employer. Not since the 1920s have employers had more power over workers. There has never been a better time to be a shareholder or executive than in America today, at least since 1929. Big Business sees the prospects

Big business is all powerful. The only alternative is to be self-employed, which requires that one be a business owner or at least a consultant, or to be a government employee (which has civil service protections). We Americans live in what may be the purest plutocracy on Earth without it being an outright kleptocracy.

...As for regulations -- many of those are simply good practice. Work around certain chemicals, and there will be regulations, even if those are employers' impositions. So it is with hexavalent chromium.  Of course there is always a temptation to use cheap labor under dangerous circumstances when consequences for hurting it is slight.

Big business likes its labor cheap, expendable, submissive, and atomized -- and is doing everything possible to get its way. The ideal employee is someone who lives in such miserable circumstances that overtime would be an escape from a crowded apartment or trailer. Why do you think it supports the most reactionary of politicians?

[pbrower2a]

(06-14-2016, 04:31 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Let's talk appropriate automation. Here's a use case.

Our little shack, on a canyon wall. Out front it's essentially almost 3 stories of exposure in places due to the grade. Now let's look at cleaning out the gutters.

Currently, choice one is me going up there. If I fall, I may die or become crippled. Major bad mojo for long term financial health of we the couple.

Other choice is to hire some pendejo to go up there. Reminds me of slavery - send the brown man to do the dangerous work.

Both kind of suck. No joke I'm going to check iRobot's website this year to see if they have something I can use instead of a human.

Bottom line - dangerous work, prefer the robot. Others? Much lower priority for automation. Automation to make humans' lives high quality and to take certain dangerous tasks off the table.

You have a good one there. Technology as a means of making life safer makes eminent sense. I would have no problem with drones fighting fires. If a drone crashes and burns, then nobody needs to send a letter of condolence or arrange for a funeral. If a wind changes direction and blows lethal heat into a gang of firefighters who die...

Human nature has changed little from antiquity. People can still relate to the Iliad and the Odyssey; some people can still organize their lives around the teachings of the Torah down to the dietary restrictions. Those of us familiar with Oedipus the King can relate to it. Because human nature does not change, the classics that people learned from in antiquity remain valid learning.

Must we allow technology to become our masters, or even the tools of oppression that elites use against us? We could end up in different communities that define themselves heavily on the technologies that people deem appropriate. Maybe some people will insist upon some hand-sewing. Some will selectively reject certain modes of electronic entertainment.