(09-27-2016, 11:18 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 09:35 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 11:11 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 12:22 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Trailing edge boomer, born 1960.

(snip)

Got married, interesting time as a software contractor through two boom and bust cycles, had three wonderful Quiet generation kids.  Currently some credit card debt, but lots of equity in reserve in the house I'd bought in 1990, so barring a generational crisis, I'll survive financially.

So basically, adulthood has been pretty much what I envisioned - I get to make my own decisions, and get to live with the consequences of those decisions.  I would never go back to being a child.

Interesting post, and I agree with you -- childhood sucked.

Question -- what is a "quiet generation" kid?  Someone born in the aughts?  If so, they should be in or approaching the dreaded middle school years.  Chin up, you'll survive. 

"Quiet generation" is how I refer to postmillenials.  "Homelander" assumes the fourth turning started with and would be primarily shaped by 9/11, and I'm unconvinced that's accurate.  My kids were born in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Ah, you're an older Dad.    They are young and definitely new adaptives.

(09-27-2016, 07:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Undiagnosed Asperger's messed up my personal life about as badly as alcoholism or drug addiction except for making me excessively cautious and perhaps self-righteous. I would have lived very differently and enjoyed a far richer life had I known about it. I might have made different choices in education and vocation.

I could have been a role model and not an example of how badly someone could waste talent. Today I am lonely, nearly broke, and stranded in a hick town in the rural Midwest. What I thought was individual eccentricity is simply expressions of a syndrome. I am now old enough that I have little to which to look forward except for an Afterlife or reincarnation in one of the most merciless of economic orders. I have cursed God for my plight instead of bad luck and the incompetence of others.

I have a conscience; I am not lazy; I have enough self-control to avoid problems that many 'healthy' people get into.  I can be trusted with promises, with assets, with legitimate secrets, with the welfare of vulnerable people, and with safe use of hazardous equipment. I could have found life precious instead of nasty.  

Yes, American capitalism since about 1980 has been perverse... but it still allows some opportunities for talented people who apply themselves well. I could have found a satisfying niche had I known that I had a problem, for I had the means of dealing with something that I understand all too late.

Warren Dew Wrote:It was in the 1930s that wealth inequalities really started skyrocketing.

(09-27-2016, 11:18 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 09:35 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 11:11 AM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(09-26-2016, 12:22 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Trailing edge boomer, born 1960.

(snip)

Got married, interesting time as a software contractor through two boom and bust cycles, had three wonderful Quiet generation kids.  Currently some credit card debt, but lots of equity in reserve in the house I'd bought in 1990, so barring a generational crisis, I'll survive financially.

So basically, adulthood has been pretty much what I envisioned - I get to make my own decisions, and get to live with the consequences of those decisions.  I would never go back to being a child.

Interesting post, and I agree with you -- childhood sucked.

Question -- what is a "quiet generation" kid?  Someone born in the aughts?  If so, they should be in or approaching the dreaded middle school years.  Chin up, you'll survive. 

"Quiet generation" is how I refer to postmillenials.  "Homelander" assumes the fourth turning started with and would be primarily shaped by 9/11, and I'm unconvinced that's accurate.  My kids were born in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Ah, you're an older Dad.    They are young and definitely new adaptives.

(06-13-2016, 07:40 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Your second paragraph reminds me that today's economic climate is so reminiscent of a holiday observed at the end of every October. Treats for the rich and powerful; tricks for most of the rest of us. When the whole MBA craze was on, to some extent the Me Generation culture no doubt helped push that along. The dark side of things didn't come home to roost for a while, but the scholarly types and those who hadn't yet sucked up to what was happening had already figured it out by 1987, by which time we had the largest homeless population since the Great Depression. The one thing which has prevent Great Depression II so far? No doubt it's consumer credit. This Christmas how about coming up with an adult letter to Santa requesting a world that feels a little less stressful?

(09-27-2016, 04:41 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 07:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Undiagnosed Asperger's messed up my personal life about as badly as alcoholism or drug addiction except for making me excessively cautious and perhaps self-righteous. I would have lived very differently and enjoyed a far richer life had I known about it. I might have made different choices in education and vocation.

I could have been a role model and not an example of how badly someone could waste talent. Today I am lonely, nearly broke, and stranded in a hick town in the rural Midwest. What I thought was individual eccentricity is simply expressions of a syndrome. I am now old enough that I have little to which to look forward except for an Afterlife or reincarnation in one of the most merciless of economic orders. I have cursed God for my plight instead of bad luck and the incompetence of others.

I have a conscience; I am not lazy; I have enough self-control to avoid problems that many 'healthy' people get into.  I can be trusted with promises, with assets, with legitimate secrets, with the welfare of vulnerable people, and with safe use of hazardous equipment. I could have found life precious instead of nasty.  

Yes, American capitalism since about 1980 has been perverse... but it still allows some opportunities for talented people who apply themselves well. I could have found a satisfying niche had I known that I had a problem, for I had the means of dealing with something that I understand all too late.

In my case Asperger's was no doubt diagnosed but not available until 1994. It was just considered autism, and the response was getting sent to two different boarding schools, the first of which I came to hate mightily toward the end.  I was quite girl crazy for much of my formative years, and through adult life, although I did try to live as normally as I possibly could, very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering. Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness. I did have some dating success during the freer, more swinging times I reached my formative years in, but dating itself is more problematic these days. More on this in later posts.

(09-27-2016, 06:54 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

Warren Dew Wrote:It was in the 1930s that wealth inequalities really started skyrocketing.

See page 56 here:
http://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucman2014.pdf

(09-27-2016, 05:04 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 04:41 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(09-27-2016, 07:48 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Undiagnosed Asperger's messed up my personal life about as badly as alcoholism or drug addiction except for making me excessively cautious and perhaps self-righteous. I would have lived very differently and enjoyed a far richer life had I known about it. I might have made different choices in education and vocation.

I could have been a role model and not an example of how badly someone could waste talent. Today I am lonely, nearly broke, and stranded in a hick town in the rural Midwest. What I thought was individual eccentricity is simply expressions of a syndrome. I am now old enough that I have little to which to look forward except for an Afterlife or reincarnation in one of the most merciless of economic orders. I have cursed God for my plight instead of bad luck and the incompetence of others.

I have a conscience; I am not lazy; I have enough self-control to avoid problems that many 'healthy' people get into.  I can be trusted with promises, with assets, with legitimate secrets, with the welfare of vulnerable people, and with safe use of hazardous equipment. I could have found life precious instead of nasty.  

Yes, American capitalism since about 1980 has been perverse... but it still allows some opportunities for talented people who apply themselves well. I could have found a satisfying niche had I known that I had a problem, for I had the means of dealing with something that I understand all too late.

In my case Asperger's was no doubt diagnosed but not available until 1994. It was just considered autism, and the response was getting sent to two different boarding schools, the first of which I came to hate mightily toward the end.  I was quite girl crazy for much of my formative years, and through adult life, although I did try to live as normally as I possibly could, very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering. Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness. I did have some dating success during the freer, more swinging times I reached my formative years in, but dating itself is more problematic these days. More on this in later posts.

"very often women tended to be suspicious of me for reasons I found totally bewildering." With the culture that assumes all men want is sex ad nice guys are rare I am not surprised.

(09-27-2016, 05:04 PM)taramarie Wrote: "Employment for folks with AS today is probably more dire than ever with all the penchant for political correctness." What has AS got to do with political correctness in the work force?

(06-12-2016, 12:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-12-2016, 01:16 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(06-11-2016, 11:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: At one time, any liberal arts degree was useful because it established that one could think coherently and communicate effectively. One had been exposed to the Great Questions of Existence. As such one could be a leader. One could adapt to many things.

Today one needs think only in narrow categories on behalf of organizations that prefer having interchangeable parts (people as if machines -- how dehumanizing!), that people think only of reward and punishment, that people live in fear of the Master Class, and that they do not challenge the status quo. Blind obedience, recognize of economic elites as people beyond judgment or criticism, and ideally support of reactionary politics well serve a grossly-inequitable social order. So one had to do something nasty to people? Dissolve your conscience with booze.

...Even if colleges all became technical  and vocational schools, there would be far too many graduates for the engineering and software-design people, lab technicians, and nurses.  

We need to rediscover the subtle delights of being truly human even at the cost of economic efficiency and rationality. Efficiency and rationality are not enough; a plantation of the Old South, a Gulag, or a fascist labor camp could be extremely efficient and rational while denying the qualities that make people human.

...The late science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein castigated the old Soviet Union as the land of the drunk. For the common man there was toil and there was drink, and nothing else. I wonder if America is headed that way.    

... Speaking of something Soviet, I have a joke. George W. Bush got struck by a lightning bold on a hot, clear Texas day, and found himself in the Hereafter. But instead of meeting such illustrious predecessors as Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, or even such mediocrities as Fillmore, Harding, or Coolidge he found himself with Leonid Brezhnev.  Unsettling as that encounter they got through a discussion of their shared mess of Afghanistan, and finally discussed the relative merits of their respective economies.

Brezhnev said, "You know the old saying... the workers pretend to work and we pretend to pay them".

Dubya responded, "We give workers fear and pay them with debt!"

Agree but NOT to the point where it sacrifices economic efficiency and rationality. That is illogical. You want another crash go right ahead.

Short-term efficiency at the cost of human happiness, let alone the survival and health (mental as well as physical) of those who actually do the work, is suspect.

Our productive capacities are great enough that we do not need poverty -- and we do not need to drive people to physical exhaustion just to get productivity.  We are at the stage at which we cannot get more prosperity from more production of stuff. We do not need more junk for the landfill or even more clutter.

Sustainable happiness is the measure of a wholesome life.

(12-31-2016, 11:14 AM)Kate Wrote:

(06-12-2016, 12:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-12-2016, 01:16 AM)taramarie Wrote:

(06-11-2016, 11:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: At one time, any liberal arts degree was useful because it established that one could think coherently and communicate effectively. One had been exposed to the Great Questions of Existence. As such one could be a leader. One could adapt to many things.

Today one needs think only in narrow categories on behalf of organizations that prefer having interchangeable parts (people as if machines -- how dehumanizing!), that people think only of reward and punishment, that people live in fear of the Master Class, and that they do not challenge the status quo. Blind obedience, recognize of economic elites as people beyond judgment or criticism, and ideally support of reactionary politics well serve a grossly-inequitable social order. So one had to do something nasty to people? Dissolve your conscience with booze.

...Even if colleges all became technical  and vocational schools, there would be far too many graduates for the engineering and software-design people, lab technicians, and nurses.  

We need to rediscover the subtle delights of being truly human even at the cost of economic efficiency and rationality. Efficiency and rationality are not enough; a plantation of the Old South, a Gulag, or a fascist labor camp could be extremely efficient and rational while denying the qualities that make people human.

Agree but NOT to the point where it sacrifices economic efficiency and rationality. That is illogical. You want another crash go right ahead.

Short-term efficiency at the cost of human happiness, let alone the survival and health (mental as well as physical) of those who actually do the work, is suspect.

Our productive capacities are great enough that we do not need poverty -- and we do not need to drive people to physical exhaustion just to get productivity.  We are at the stage at which we cannot get more prosperity from more production of stuff. We do not need more junk for the landfill or even more clutter.

Sustainable happiness is the measure of a wholesome life.

I agree. It does not follow that this path must lead to financial strife. The fact is that crony capitalism only works for the 1%. It is not true capitalism, not a free market. Regulations that are put in place for people is seen as a detriment for business but regulation put in place to enhance one business over another is seen as being good for capitalism and markets when the reverse is true in both cases.

My preference is that capitalism be shrunken down to community size pieces. The Corporation, that suckling upon the government's teat should be drowned. They have grown so large to be called "to big to fail", to have seats in meetings of heads of nations. That is not conducive. Capitalism should be run as if people mattered. Thus the need for the people, the masses to have education in humanities.

(09-13-2017, 09:14 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: In a strange irony, it seems the best years of my adult life thus far were during the 3T.

No doubt part of it was having fewer responsibilities, being further from death, having fewer overt ravages of aging.

But that is not the whole enchilada. Another reason I look back to those times is the flow of life. Back then, the flow of life was much more satisfying. I am describing external characteristics which would be true irrespective of my personal state.

Now, not to be in denial. The precursors to today's fuckedupedness were already in place, through much of the 3T. Especially the 2nd half of the 3T.