03-25-2017, 11:10 AM
The current Crisis has an economic basis: the end of the dominance of manufacturing in the economy. The trend existed long ago by political standards of time -- in the 1970s. As kids we Boomers were told to reject factory work because such work was mindless and doomed. The Best and Brightest took that advice from GIs seriously, and stayed clear of manufacturing. The people who ended up with manufacturing jobs were the ones who messed up their lives with inapt pregnancies and minor criminal offenses or were simply dullards. The quality of manufacturing thus declined. From electronics to cars, the good stuff started to be Made In Japan... and the quality of American manufacturing went into a tailspin.
Truth be told, the factory was the most reliable way out of poverty. Some of us who took the advice to stay clear of the factory did very well. That happens. There always were people who worked outside of the economic norm of making stuff to sell. Skilled trades. Creative activities. Administration. Well-paid professions from law and medicine to accountancy and teaching, and the new and (for a while) glamorous activity in computers. Agriculture -- if the farm was substantial and your family owned it. Selling, of course. But much of the clerical and (retail) sales work paid horribly.
Generation X was unabashedly more materialistic -- and arguably more realistic. It was interested more in the money, especially as the reality of rising rents and energy costs told them that making stuff was necessary for creating the material basis of prosperity, or at lest some genteel poverty. But as a share of employment, manufacturing would decline even if it got better.
Smaller dwellings are the norm in America for almost anyone in urban America -- and much of Suburbia has become urban. More of the American economy is economic rent -- easy money for owners of assets -- which is not good for economic equality. People can't buy as much stuff as they used to, let alone keep it without finding life unmanageable.
We have some opportunity with infrastructure to repair and replace water mains, sewers, and transit, making them better at great expense. Maybe the greedy dream of transforming freeways into profit-gouging toll roads might appeal to some of the most rapacious plutocrats who invest a little now and rake in billions.
"Profit, profit over everything/Damn the public/give 'em the shaft! We don't need excessive government/all we need is plenty of graft!"
The dream of the economic Right is a nightmare for us all. That's before I even discuss the Religious Right. That's where we are stuck in 2017.
Truth be told, the factory was the most reliable way out of poverty. Some of us who took the advice to stay clear of the factory did very well. That happens. There always were people who worked outside of the economic norm of making stuff to sell. Skilled trades. Creative activities. Administration. Well-paid professions from law and medicine to accountancy and teaching, and the new and (for a while) glamorous activity in computers. Agriculture -- if the farm was substantial and your family owned it. Selling, of course. But much of the clerical and (retail) sales work paid horribly.
Generation X was unabashedly more materialistic -- and arguably more realistic. It was interested more in the money, especially as the reality of rising rents and energy costs told them that making stuff was necessary for creating the material basis of prosperity, or at lest some genteel poverty. But as a share of employment, manufacturing would decline even if it got better.
Smaller dwellings are the norm in America for almost anyone in urban America -- and much of Suburbia has become urban. More of the American economy is economic rent -- easy money for owners of assets -- which is not good for economic equality. People can't buy as much stuff as they used to, let alone keep it without finding life unmanageable.
We have some opportunity with infrastructure to repair and replace water mains, sewers, and transit, making them better at great expense. Maybe the greedy dream of transforming freeways into profit-gouging toll roads might appeal to some of the most rapacious plutocrats who invest a little now and rake in billions.
"Profit, profit over everything/Damn the public/give 'em the shaft! We don't need excessive government/all we need is plenty of graft!"
The dream of the economic Right is a nightmare for us all. That's before I even discuss the Religious Right. That's where we are stuck in 2017.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.