07-13-2016, 11:40 AM
(07-13-2016, 08:26 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:[/quote](07-13-2016, 07:41 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: The USA grossly under-invests in the education of poor people. Building another expressway (traffic volumes are not increasing, so it is often pointless) is sexy; investing in K-12 education isn't. Of course we have subcultures that show utter disdain for learning among poor whites and among some blacks who have yet to get a clue. I need be blunt: the "thug" subculture is not good for success.
A few nitpicks.
Building another expressway is often pointless and maybe a bit sexy, but fixing bridges and other failing infrastructure has a point and is not sexy. A change in emphasis might be appropriate, but there's a bit more thinking to be done.
Maintenance isn't sexy. But it goes with the building. A Congressional candidate can promise something like "I will get you Interstate 32 if you elect me"... and it might work if your district goes through Huntsville, Alabama or Charlotte, North Carolina.
Quote:I've a sense that we're producing more college graduates than there are jobs which truly require an advanced degree. This surplus of degrees results in jobs that don't truly need degrees going only to those with degrees, providing another set of hurtles for those with high school education or less.
We have the escalation of qualifications, with many employers insisting that the workers in their call centers have college degrees even though the work pays slightly more than the minimum wage. It used to be that employers refused to hire college graduates for jobs as tellers and store clerks, but with the rigid glass ceilings to advancement the concern that over-educated people might leave shortly as they wait for better opportunities to appear elsewhere may be less of a risk.
People with college degrees are job-takers -- not job-creators. We would be better off preparing people to become street vendors than to become glorified clerks with huge student loans to pay off. I'm not denying the value of education in itself; it is that we have made college education so expensive that its value is suspect.
Such jobs as college graduates generally create are low-skilled, low-wage jobs that above-average incomes generate with the college graduate patronizing stores and restaurants.
Quote:A bottom line problem is automation getting rid of jobs, producing a surplus of job seekers, which according to supply and demand results in depressed wages. To some degree you can try to repeal the law of supply and demand using minimum wage laws.
At some point we might have to consider maximum hour laws. If we don't want to do a lot of dole, and just about nobody does, you need near full employment at living wages. This would require taking some of the money going to the One Percent and spreading it around.
We can do as much in six or even five hours of work that we once did in manufacturing and distribution in the 1930s when the American economy introduced the eight-hour day as a norm. To be sure, there are services like barbering and teaching that have not become more efficient...
Quote:Which seems to be a good part of the Democratic agenda. I listened to a lot of the Hillary - Bernie kiss and make up rally. Bernie spent a lot of time reviewing platform planks that both he and Hillary favor. Mandate a living wage. Give everyone access to affordable health care. Shift the tax burden away from those who can't afford it. Still, they are advocating band aids. I've a sense that the New Economy is going to require a major rework. Well, it's been observed that the end result of a crisis is generally far more profound than the progressives anticipated before the regeneracy. Once the progressives have control and the people like stuff that is working, people can go nuts, signing Emancipation Proclamations and turning an isolationist nation into the world's policeman. Something equally profound might be due... or overdue.
The problem is that the rot within our social order has very powerful people profiteering from it. Much of the American GDP is economic rent -- easy money for well-connected people. That is the cornerstone of the "New Economy" as envisioned by Ronald Reagan and subsequent Republicans. I almost think that we will need some calamity (a war for profit that goes badly) to discredit the rentier class and force America to have other priorities in a reconstruction.
Quote:When I shift into my proxy Red perspective, trying to think like the other guys, it sounds intolerable. It's government mandated redistribution of wealth. It's taking money away from productive members of society and giving it to losers. It assumes that the Washington DC bureaucrats can run a program without turning it corrupt and inefficient. It runs against everything that Saint Reagan stood for. It's all take from the haves, and give to the have nots. Clearly, if you are one of the haves, it's in your self interest to vote Republican? All that bureaucracy and meddling will inevitably bring the country to its knees.
Quite simple and straight forward, really. Two groups of people living in alternate realities, both trying to make their reality real.
When people making huge incomes off sweetheart deals with the federal, state, and local governments; people making easy money as landowners and landlords while living off low-touch investments; executives being paid very well for treating subordinates badly; and shysters operating legitimized rackets (licit loansharking) go down -- that's when the economy works for workers instead of working for everyone but working people. But beware: that is an America in which our cities resemble Berlin in the summer of 1945.
Elect Donald Trump, and we get a very bad 4T.
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.