05-29-2020, 05:39 AM
(05-28-2020, 01:50 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: It won’t end. The turnings don’t travel backwards. The new society adapted to solve the crisis problem becomes the new normal.
Real progress demands the resolution of the current Crisis, one that will not simply fade away. Good leaders would attack the root causes of economic distress and our vulnerability to such a menace as COVID-19 that has exploited the vice of seeking to live large on the cheap. Like cheap meat that depends upon people working under conditions that make them too sick to work? That is over.
Quote:I have long thought we were too addicted to luxuries. While the New Deal adjusted the retirement age and the work week expectation, the numbers that they settled on became fixed and unchangeable since. In order for the elites to eke out maximum profits, they created in part though advertising a society that was hooked on material things they didn’t need.
Many of us are finding out that we can live without many of the things that we used to buy with little thought. The shutdown will last long enough to break some habits (as opposed to some economic realities).
Quote:The virus is giving us a chance to rethink that. Suddenly, the older folks shouldn’t be in the workplace, and we find no need to buy certain things. Productivity has increased, so we don’t need to put so many hours in. Resources are becoming more expensive. If we still want to use labor to distribute wealth, start by dividing the amount of labor needed by the number of laborers. Don’t worship old numbers.
Older people might still like to work -- but many of them can work remotely, especially if their work is mental in character. "Make it do or do without " is one Crisis Era solution to an economy dedicated to defeating the Axis powers. It can also serve to reduce emission of greenhouse-gases. I have seen some projections of global warming... and if you think the previous Crisis was nasty, just think of what happens when a huge part of the world's best croplands are inundated, and when agricultural (let alone ecological) zones cannot move fast enough
Quote:If we have 25% unemployment, can you just drop the amount of labor expected by 25%? Or do you have some thing about providing the elites with absurd wealth?
If it takes thirty hours to produce what we used to produce in forty, and we don't need so much stuff, then that will be what we need to do.
Quote:Stop dreaming about going backwards.
The Third Turning, with its supply-side ideology, the speculative bubbles, the under-investment in plant and equipment, the treatment of 'luxury' as a virtue, the celebrity circus (of which Donald Trump was a part), and the stratospheric rewards to bureaucratic elites got us into this mess. So you just totaled your car because you were driving drunk -- what are you going to do? Get drunk again?
I am tempted to believe that Americans are going to use Donald Trump as a scapegoat and an excuse for doing everything differently.
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.